Experiences in Strategic Information Systems Planning

Individual Research Paper Review

MIS – 630

Prof. Paul Rohmeyer

Article 1:

Experiences in Strategic Information Systems Planning

The Article is regarding the various experiences the author observed in the Strategic Information Systems Planning (SISP) practices and the various methods companies adopted. SISP was designed to target four areas: Aligning investment in IS with business goals, Exploiting IT for competitive advantage, Directing effective and efficient management of IS resources, Developing Technology policies and architectures. SISP has been defined as “the process of deciding the objectives for organizational computing and identifying potential computer applications which the organization should implement”.

The methodology used, to capture the intent and outcomes of SISP, was a two staged survey. The first stage was the history of the company based on accounts of IS Director and/or IS Strategic planner and internal documentation. The second stage was based on the data collected from the first stage. The data was collected through set of questionnaires to gain qualitative and quantitative analysis and also to record the experiences with specific SISP methodologies.

Data collected from the respondents suggested that the main objective of SISP was to Align IS with Business needs followed by Seek Competitive Advantage from IT, Gain Top Management Commitment, Forecast IS Resource Requirements, Establish Technology Path and Policies. SISP benefits also indicated the same pattern by ranking “Align IS with Business needs” at the top of the list. The data collected for Unsuccessful features of SISP revealed a different picture on the analysis and the common concerns were tabulated in the following order Resource Constraints, Not Fully Implemented, Lack of Top Management Acceptance, Length of Time Involved, Poor User-IS Relationships. These concerns were then grouped into 3 different categories Method, Process, Implementation.

The experience of organizations in this study indicates that no single factor is likely to lead to universal success in SISP. Instead, successful SISP is more probable when organizations realize that method, process, and implementation are all necessary issue sets to be managed. The list of concerns and narrative Histories of planning-related events shifted the focus of this study to SISP approach which was viewed as the interaction of method, process, and implementation.

The salient features of SISP were compared across the 21 companies, five distinct approaches were identified as follows:

1.  Business-Led
2.  Method-Driven
3.  Administrative
4.  Technological
5.  Organizational

1. Business-Led approach stated that Business plans and needs should drive IS plans and emphasis was given on Business leads IS and not vice versa approach.
2. Method-Driven approach states that IS strategies will be enhanced by use of a formal SISP method and its emphasis was on the selection of the best method available.
3. Administrative approach defined that SISP Should follow and conform with the firm's management planning and control procedures and emphasized identification and allocation of IS resources to meet agreed needs.
4. Technological approach assumed SISP as an exercise in business and information modelling and stressed on Production of models and blueprints.
5. Organizational approach says that SISP is a continuous decision-making activity shared by the business and IS and highlighted that Organizational Learning about business problems and opportunities and the IT contribution.

After analyzing the 5 different approaches through factors such as Success measures, Concerns per firm, Competitive Advantage Propensity and Multidimensional Ranking of SISP Approaches it was concluded that both qualitative and quantitative evidence suggest that the Organizational Approach is likely to be the best SISP approach to use.

Article 2:

The Impact of Data Integration on the Costs and Benefits of Information Systems

The article is based on the argument that data integration always results in net benefits to an organization against the costs of design and implementation and losses that incur in local autonomy and flexibility. The importance of each of these impacts is defended by theoretical arguments and illustrated by case examples. The developed model suggests that the benefits of data integration will outweigh costs only under certain situations, and probably not for all the data the organization uses. Thus making researchers aware of the need for better conceptualization and methods for implementing "partial integration" in organizations.

There has been a conceptual appeal for data integration but organizations have failed in the attempt. Data Integration is difficult to implement in practice because of two reasons implementation pitfalls of data integration and possibility of shortcomings in the methodologies used. This article considers a third possible reason stating “data integration efforts may fail because in certain organizational contexts they do not provide sufficient benefits to offset their costs”.

The cumulative experience represented by the case studies from MI strongly suggests that the net benefits of increased data integration will not always be positive but will depend upon three main organizational factors: (1) the interdependence of subunits, (2) the need for locally unique or flexible action by subunits, and (3) the difficulty of designing and implementing systems with integrated data.

Author has tried to explain issues faced in data integration through examples of Integrated and Nonintegrated environment in an organization and later arrived at partial integration as one of the solution. A model was developed to realize the impact of data integration and to think about the issue of data integration and also to analyze different aspects such as Costs and benefits of IS, Organizational Information Processing, Sources of Uncertainty and Uncertainty of Equivocality.

The basic design problem is to balance the costs of information processing capacity against the needs—too much capacity will be redundant and costly; too little capacity will not get the job done". The impact of data integration on the Costs and benefits of information systems will come primarily through three potential factors: