Topic C - Key Issues Investigation
Under the guidance of Dr. James Hall
Ans. 1: Issue Ranking | 2008 | 2013 | 1 | IT and Business alignment | Alignment of IT with the Business | 2 | Build business skills in IT | Business Agility | 3 | IT strategic planning | Business Productivity | 4 | Attracting new IT professionals | Business Cost Reduction & Controls | 5 | Making better use of information | IT Cost Reduction and Controls |

Comparing the list of issues of 2008 with 2013 from SIM survey report:
Even though IT management working hard to maximize the use of IT to improve the business operations, but still this is the key concern from 2003 till 2013 as per SIM survey. Because of the ever-changing market, business and customer needs, this issue has become a continuous improvement process. Example: Enterprise Recourse Planning (ERP) solutions in the current market, even though many companies claims to provide best ERP solution for Transport, Manufacturing, Software or any business will have many limitations attached to it. The change in the priorities of concerns in border sense:
When we compare the list of issues we can see that the management has changed its strategy to deal with the different concerns. Management enforced strategies to improve focus on concerns with high severity by segregating the merged areas and promoting such issue to higher level. Example: The ‘Business Productivity & Cost Reduction” which user to be considered as combined issue in previous years is segregated in 2013 and different issue and are ranked as 3 & 4 as per their importance. Likewise Business Agility is detached from Speed to Market and ranked 2 and 6 accordingly.

The priorities of concerns have changed over last five years because of the factors like fluctuating market trends, exponential change in information systems, improved business operation