Alignment of project benefits with competitive strategies

[spins006]

Hello!

Could anybody explain, why it is important to to align project benefits with corporate strategic planning using three generic competitive strategies - Low-cost producer; Product Differentiation; Product Focus and Niche.
It would be nice of you could provide with examples of information systems development project for a company having one of the generic competitive strategy to show how the benefits of the project align with the strategy and alignment works for the company.

Thank you!

[quickscrum]

The decisions on software and hardware, had long-term implications that trying to tie them in with the business plan was necessary.
There are many reasons why many companies strive for strategic alignment including the reduction of such things as redundancy, conflicting work and that it helps to achieve specific goals and improve the company’s competitive advantage by defining such things as capabilities and competencies.

Some more arguments presented in the case against the strategic alignment of IT are:

(1) Alignment research is mechanistic and fails to capture real life,

(2) Alignment is not possible if the business strategy is unknown or in process,

(3) Alignment is not desirable as an end in itself since the business must always change, and

(4) IT should often challenge the business, not follow it.