Strategic Planning of IS/IT: View on Strategic Resources

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Strategic Planning of IS/IT: View on Strategic Resources

This paper will discuss the relevance of strategic resource and information management in the context of strategic planning of information system and information technology. It will pay attention on the concept of core competences particularly and distinctive capabilities.  Moreover, the difficulties will be revealed when the above concepts are introduced into an organisation’s IM strategy.  

Introduction

In the 80’s and 90’s, information has emerged as an agent of integration and the enabler of new competitiveness for today’s enterprise in the global marketplace.  It has been a growing realization of the need to make information systems strategically important.  Consequently, strategic planning of information system and information technology (IS/IT) has been identified as the crucial issue of information management.

Planning for information systems, as for any other system, begins with identification of needs.  In order to be effective, development of any IS should be a response to need.  Under the circumstance of today’s competition, such planning for IS/IT is required to be long term oriented and serve as the framework for determining the product/market combination of a corporation, and therefore, becoming strategic.

In the formulation of such a strategy, many approaches are introduced.  In this paper, resource-based approach, the perspective one that emphasizes on content (on the other hand, descriptive is where process is prime), is going to be discussed.  

The plan for this paper is fourfold: first, to describe a proper definition of strategic planning of IS/IT and set it as the context of this paper; second, to review the resource-based perspective; third, to discuss the difficulties when this approach is introduced into information management and to offer some advice to tackle these problems, and finally, to draw a conclusion.

Strategic Planning of IS/IT

Strategic planning of IS/IT or strategic information system planning (SISP) has been the subject of differing terminologies in recent years. Some of them are mentioned below, partly based on enumerations by Fitzgerald (1993: 336):

  1. MIS Planning (Bowman et al. 1983);
  2. SPIS: strategic planning for information systems (King 1988);
  3. Information Planning  
  4. Information Strategy
  5. SISP: strategic information systems planning (Earl 1993).

Such a list can be still continued on and on.  In the rest of this paper, SISP will be adopted. Following Fitzgerald’s line of reasoning, SISP can have two different meanings (Fitzgerald 1993, 336-337; see also Lederer & Sethi 1988, 446):

  1. The strategic (long-term) planning of information systems.

Lederer & Sethi use the following description: SISP is the process of deciding on the objectives for organizational computing and identifying potential computer applications that the organization should implement (1988: 445);

2. The planning of strategic information systems that will give organizations a competitive advantage. Rackoff et al. view SISP as the planning for information systems used to support or shape the organization's competitive strategy, its plan for gaining and/or maintaining advantage (1985:285).

The first point describes the general planning of IT, not specifically aimed at competitive advantage. The idea of gaining competitive advantage via IS/IT is suggested by the second one.  Hence, Fitzgerald combines these elements and he reaches the following definition based on the description of Lederer & Sethi:

SISP is the process of identifying a portfolio of computer-based applications that will assist an organization in executing its business plans and consequently realizing its business goals and/or the process of searching for applications with a high impact and the ability to create an advantage over competitors. (Fitzgerald 1993: 337; Lederer & Sethi 1988).

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Thus, in this paper, SISP can be seen as the analysis of an organisation’s information and processes using business information models together with the evaluation of risk, current needs and requirements.  The result is ‘an action plan showing the desired course of events necessary to align information use and needs with strategic direction of the company’ (Battaglia 1991).  He also emphasizes the need to note that SISP is a management function and not a technical one.   As the process of identifying a portfolio of information systems and the critical of information management, SISP will assist an organization in ...

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