ICT Strategic Plan for Clothes Retail Chain

This report discusses the design of an ICT strategy for a popular clothes retail chain for the next 5 years. It covers the organizational vision, mission, and objectives, as well as the major drivers for change and the ICT capabilities required. The report also includes a roadmap and ICT initiatives, as well as the importance of IT governance.

Running head: ICT STRATEGIC PLAN
ICT Strategic Plan 2020 to 2025
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s Note:

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Table of Contents
1. Introduction............................................................................................................................2
2. Discussion..............................................................................................................................2
2.1 Brief Idea of the Case Study............................................................................................2
2.2 Design of an ICT Strategy for Positioning the Clothes Retail Chain for Future Growth
to maintain Security over next 5 Years..................................................................................3
2.2.1 Organizational Vision, Mission and Objective.........................................................3
2.2.2 Background of the ICT Strategy...............................................................................3
2.2.3 Major Drivers for Change in the Organization.........................................................4
2.2.4 Three ICT Strategic Themes and Relevant ICT Capabilities....................................5
2.2.5 Roadmap and ICT Initiatives....................................................................................7
2.2.6 IT Governance...........................................................................................................8
3. Conclusion..............................................................................................................................8
References..................................................................................................................................9
Appendix..................................................................................................................................11

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1. Introduction
Information and communication technology strategy or simply ICT strategy can be
referred to as the plan of activity that is needed for creating the core capability of IT for
sustainable and higher values for any specific company (Law, Buhalis and Cobanoglu 2014).
The main objective of an ICT strategy is to create value for business and stakeholders and
even maximizing value and providing security to the assets and resources. The following
report will be designing an ICT strategy for a popular clothes retail chain for next 5 years.
2. Discussion
2.1 Brief Idea of the Case Study
A popular clothes retail chain is facing few issues in their business regarding tracking
of the inventory. A specific portion has gone missing either in transit within the stores and
warehouse and stores from the inside theft by their customers. They have even decided to
make a move to online services and the owner will gain few insights to every changing
pattern in sales from the customers for targeting marketing. Expansion is also an important
and significant aspect, in which the CEO has decided to focus. Excess inventory is required
for clearing the stock and thus information technology could be utilized for better
management of inventory and even preventing the requirement for higher discounts on
clothes prices in the end of season sales. Better options are required than the owned tablet
devices, used for checking the prices of competitors and inventory. Hence, a proper ICT
strategic plan is required to be made with features of innovation, planning and deployment in
the year of 2025.

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2.2 Design of an ICT Strategy for Positioning the Clothes Retail Chain for Future
Growth to maintain Security over next 5 Years
2.2.1 Organizational Vision, Mission and Objective
i) Vision: The vision of this popular clothes retail chain is to strive to be a global
leader in fashion world by simply empowering creativity and innovation as well as design for
providing total customer satisfaction (Vaishnavi and Kuechler 2015). They are striving to be
a caring and well managed clothing retail for the business partners, employees and customers.
ii) Mission: The mission of this popular clothes retail chain is to lead, innovate,
enhance and provide the best valued products and services to their customers and make a
difference through their branding strategy for gaining competitive advantages from other
competitors, latest technologies, market changes and fashion trends.
iii) Objective: The main objective of the organization is to get updated solutions for
their inventory tracking issues and make a move to online retail. Moreover, the owner of this
company even wants to have some insights to the respective changing patterns within sales
from every individual customers and then target marketing (Dutta, Geiger and Lanvin 2015).
The organizational management wants to provide products and services after considering the
prices of their competitors.
2.2.2 Background of the ICT Strategy
The ICT strategy is required to be created for the future of this organization, so that
they are able to plan for their business processes and objectives in the next 5 years. In recent
situation, the clothes retail chain has faced issues, since a portion of their inventory has gone
missing and they are unable to find out that whether it went missing in transit between stores
and warehouse or was stolen by some customers. Moreover, they have decided to move to the
online retail and also change their patterns in sales. Expansion is also expected by them in

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their business and they are expecting to track their inventory with the help of information
technology and also provide discounts to the customers after consideration of competitors’
prices (Bloom et al. 2014). They want to ensure innovation and implementation of new
techniques in their business and in the technology used by them.
2.2.3 Major Drivers for Change in the Organization
The most significant and important drivers for technological changes in the clothing
retail are as follows:
i) Better Innovation and Creativity: This is the first and the foremost driver for such
distinctive changes in the clothing retail store. The new ideas and ideologies will be
providing some of the most significant and important competitive benefits to the
organization, so that they would be able to gain better insights and high return value.
ii) Meeting Customer Demands: It is required to fulfil each and every requirement
and demand of the customers, so that these customers get better quality of clothes from the
company in lesser prices (Gillespie, Boczkowski and Foot 2014). To ensure customer
satisfaction, they should provide better discounts to the loyal customers only after
considering the competitors’ prices in the most effective manner.
iii) Online Retail: This is the third effective and important driver for such distinctive
changes in the clothing retail store. Since, they have decided to make a move to online
retailing, it will be extremely vital for them to bring out better products of ICT and make a
proper strategy for resolving the issues and complexities in the most effective manner.
iv) Inventory Tracking: Since, the CEO of this particular organization has taken the
decision of tracking their inventory sales and ensure data management or DM, it would be
extremely important for them to bring out such changes in the business. It would ensure in

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the next 5 years, i.e. in the year of 2025, the organization will not be losing any of their items
in any condition such as in transit or theft by customers.
v) Updating Technology: Another distinctive and vital driver for such changes in the
respective clothing retail is up grading their technology (Gillespie, Boczkowski and Foot
2014). With this specific technology up gradation, it would be extremely easier for them to
change their existing tablet devices and hence becoming much easier to check inventory and
competitors’ prices.
vi) Increasing IT Capabilities: The organization would be able to increase their IT
capabilities to a high level and they would be able to bring more efficiency and innovation in
the business without much complexity.
2.2.4 Three ICT Strategic Themes and Relevant ICT Capabilities
The most significant and important ICT capabilities of the large clothing retail are as
follows:
i) Better Infrastructure: The first and the most significant ICT capability would be
better infrastructure (Erol-Kantarci and Mouftah 2014). They would be able to get better
accessibility of all products and technological advancements with a better infrastructure.
They can utilize IaaS cloud model for this purpose and hence would be able to obtain
virtualized computing resources on the Internet connection.
ii) Data Management: Since, the clothing retail has lost their items and are unable to
track the database properly that from where the item got missing, it would be extremely vital
for them to manage their data in the most effective and efficient manner. With this
technology, they would be able to acquire, validate, store, protect as well as process the
required data for ensuring reliability and accessibility of the data.

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iii) Mobile Device Management: This is the next ICT capability that they would get
in the year of 2025. It is a specific software, which enables the IT administrators in
controlling, securing and enforcing policies over tablets and smart phones. It helps them in
optimizing the security and functionality of the mobile devices in the enterprise.
iv) Governance: The retail store will be able to govern their business under every
circumstance and issues would be resolved majorly (Garvey 2014). The COBIT framework
would be extremely effective for this business to govern their ICT strategies.
v) Customer Relationship Management: A better relationship with the customers will
be maintained in the next 5 years and better customer satisfaction will be prevailed.
vi) Risks and Security: They would be able to resolve the risks and threats related to
their data and information and better security will be maintained effectively.
Three distinctive ICT strategic themes for fulfilling all the above mentioned 6 ICT
capabilities are as follows:
i) Digital Insight: With this particular ICT strategic theme, the organization would be
able get their complete digital transformation within next 5 years (Ding et al.2015). It helps
to transform the business from platitudes to relevant actionable perspectives in extremely
lesser time. The approach would be quite hassle free for the business.
ii) Digital Frameworks: This ICT strategic theme will be providing digital
frameworks to the organization so that they are able to implement their business objectives
and strategies properly. Various platforms will be provided by them so that they are able to
track the inventory in a digitalized manner and profit will be high after 5 years (See
Appendix).

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iii) Digital Intrinsic Agility: This particular theme is responsible for focusing on the
future growth and development with better capabilities, skills and continuous digital
transformation (Xiang, Magnini and Fesenmaier 2015). It ensures that these are becoming the
intrinsic parts of the organizational operating model and the business models are completely
agile in nature.
2.2.5 Roadmap and ICT Initiatives
It is required to follow a proper planned process and execute the steps to take up ICT
initiatives for bringing changes in the business. The steps to be followed are provide below:
i) Taking a strategic approach towards IT planning and operations after adopting the
standards of clothing industry.
ii) Adopting updated software in the business for every new application and tool.
iii) Selecting suitable vendors for the ICT changes within their business.
iv) Seeking alignment within the products of the business and requirements of
customers (Aceto, Persico and Pescapé 2018).
v) Providing high availability servers and storage infrastructures for resolving issues
related to inventory tracking.
vi) Providing IT infrastructure for the applications, networks and servers for achieving
security and privacy of the data.
vii) Moving their infrastructure and applications to cloud based services like IaaS for
focusing on IT personnel working on the integration of data.
viii) Improving customer satisfaction and also aligning resources with customer
demands.

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2.2.6 IT Governance
IT governance is required in the business for ensuring that the clothing retail is using
IT for achieving their goals and objectives. A proper framework of IT governance, would be
able to generate business values, mitigate the risks, which are related with the business and
also for sustaining the organizational objectives and strategies (Jin et al. 2014). COBIT
framework would be extremely effective for this business as it would provide better quality,
control and reliability of the information systems within the business and also for mitigating
the risks and threats related to data security.
3. Conclusion
Hence, conclusion could be drawn that an ICT strategy utilizes an iterative procedure
for the core purpose of creation as well as alignment of the IT capabilities with each and
every business need. As technology is being aligned with the business goals, it is helpful in
contributing success to the strategic objectives as well as building a stronger relation within
ICT departments and business for securing commitment to ICT strategy. The above report
has clearly demonstrated an ICT strategy for a clothes retail chain for the next 5 years by
focusing on the various IT factors like infrastructure, data management, mobile device
management, governance, CRM and risks or security.

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References
Aceto, G., Persico, V. and Pescapé, A., 2018. The role of Information and Communication
Technologies in healthcare: taxonomies, perspectives, and challenges. Journal of Network
and Computer Applications, 107, pp.125-154.
Bloom, N., Garicano, L., Sadun, R. and Van Reenen, J., 2014. The distinct effects of
information technology and communication technology on firm organization. Management
Science, 60(12), pp.2859-2885.
Ding, Z., Zhong, C., Ng, D.W.K., Peng, M., Suraweera, H.A., Schober, R. and Poor, H.V.,
2015. Application of smart antenna technologies in simultaneous wireless information and
power transfer. IEEE Communications Magazine, 53(4), pp.86-93.
Dutta, S., Geiger, T. and Lanvin, B., 2015. The global information technology report 2015.
In World Economic Forum (Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. P80-85).
Erol-Kantarci, M. and Mouftah, H.T., 2014. Energy-efficient information and communication
infrastructures in the smart grid: A survey on interactions and open issues. IEEE
Communications Surveys & Tutorials, 17(1), pp.179-197.
Garvey, W.D., 2014. Communication: the essence of science: facilitating information
exchange among librarians, scientists, engineers and students. Elsevier.
Gillespie, T., Boczkowski, P.J. and Foot, K.A. eds., 2014. Media technologies: Essays on
communication, materiality, and society. MIT Press.
Jin, J., Gubbi, J., Marusic, S. and Palaniswami, M., 2014. An information framework for
creating a smart city through internet of things. IEEE Internet of Things journal, 1(2), pp.112-
121.

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Law, R., Buhalis, D. and Cobanoglu, C., 2014. Progress on information and communication
technologies in hospitality and tourism. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality
Management, 26(5), pp.727-750.
Nocentini, A., Zambuto, V. and Menesini, E., 2015. Anti-bullying programs and Information
and Communication Technologies (ICTs): A systematic review. Aggression and Violent
Behavior, 23, pp.52-60.
Vaishnavi, V.K. and Kuechler, W., 2015. Design science research methods and patterns:
innovating information and communication technology. Crc Press.
Xiang, Z., Magnini, V.P. and Fesenmaier, D.R., 2015. Information technology and consumer
behavior in travel and tourism: Insights from travel planning using the internet. Journal of
Retailing and Consumer Services, 22, pp.244-249.

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Appendix
Graphical Representation of 5 Years Expected Growth of the Company