Analysis:

The roles of a Chief Information Officer (CIO) is well defined by the modern dominant business and technology strategy. Today, technology consumerization is the primary driving force for the industry and as such, the CIO must remain updated with the incoming risks and opportunities. Amazon has been growing steadily in the past few decades as evidenced by an enlarged customer base and increased business sub-units. In the last nine years, the company has acquired highly valued startups to boost its own business strategy. They include Zappos, twitch, and goodreads, among others (Smith, 2014). In this case, the core responsibility of a CIO (Chief Information Officer) at Amazon in regards to acquisition and deployment, would be to ensure total integration of the business sub-units.  Moreover, in order for a CIO at Amazon to succeed at his roles, he must have an intimate idea of the way the current technology can be used to increase the company’s sales.

Plan of Action:                                                                                                                   

            The success of Amazon is founded on the ability of the company to effectively execute its strategy and understand what works well on the internet. Thus, as a CIO, the first strategy is to integrate these new acquired sub-units into Amazon’s systems. As organisations expands, some of them begin to fragment over time due to disintegration and lack of synchronization of profitable potential business portfolios (Rouse, 2015). To avoid such pitfalls, the CIO has to create a team of IT experts within and without the company. Such a team will in turn create an integrated system whose performance will be easy to monitor. This will also ease the CIO’s burden of controlling new project portfolios and will also enhance value created by the total business portfolios.

 Amazon needs to keep up with innovation in order to survive. The acquisitions made by Amazon are unique business units with technological features that every user ought to know. For instance, Kiva system is a business unit that has improved Amazon’s efficiency in delivering products to the customer’s doorsteps (Smith, 2014). Thus, upon the acquisition of new business under the umbrella of Amazon, the first role of a CIO would be to review the software and hardware acquisition, as well the maintenance contracts with the intention of pursing a master agreement to capitalize on economies of scale. In this way, the company will continue being competitive and profitable in the IT sector because the new business are aligned with the company’s vision and IT changes in the sector.

Communication breakdown is another issue that the CIO should take into consideration. Effective communication between customers, vendors and people within the company is a major determinant of performance. Therefore, the CIO may create an IT communication system with cloud features, which will maintain connections between the various users either in the C2C (customer to customer), B2C (business to customer) or B2B (business to business) market.

Future Scope:                                                                               

            As the CIO at Amazon, I plan on continuing to grow the company through the identification of opportunities for the cost effective and appropriate investments in IT systems and resources. I will capitalize on available opportunities to enhance growth. This shall be realized by continued investment in new and innovative IT strategies aimed at adding value to Amazon. In addition, enhanced knowledge in communication management, systems integration, innovativeness and business value will enable the CIO at Amazon to take the company to the next level.

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References

Rouse, M. (2015). Chief information Officer (CIO) definition. Techtarget. 

Smith, D. (2014). Chart of the Day: Amazon’s Biggest Acquisitions. Business Insider. chart-of-the-day-amazons-biggest-acquisitions-2014-8