MIS 2 : Assignment 2

Assignment 2:

What should be the nature of relationship between a business plan and an IS plan?


Planning is very important for an organization. As described by the wikipedia, “Planning in organizations and public policy is both the organizational process of creating and maintaining a plan; and the psychological process of thinking about the activities required to create a desired goal on some scale. As such, it is a fundamental property of intelligent behavior. This thought process is essential to the creation and refinement of a plan, or integration of it with other plans, that is, it combines forecasting of developments with the preparation of scenarios of how to react to them”.There are different kinds of plan. Some is mentioned already in the question for our second assignment in Management Information System. These are Business plan and Information System plan. But before I talk about the nature of relationship between the business plan and the Information Sytem plan, let me define first the two mentioned plans. What is a business plan? What is Information System plan?

First is business plan. According to wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, a business plan is a formal statement of a set of business goals, the reasons why they are believed attainable, and the plan for reaching those goals. It may also contain background information about the organization or team attempting to reach those goals. Business plans may be internally or externally focused. Externally focused plans target goals that are important to external stakeholders, particularly financial stakeholders. They typically have detailed information about the organization or team attempting to reach the goals. With for-profit entities, external stakeholders include investors and customers. External stake-holders of non-profits include donors and the clients of the non-profit's services. For government agencies, external stakeholders include tax-payers, higher-level government agencies, and international lending bodies such as the IMF, the World Bank, various economic agencies of the UN, and development banks. Internally focused business plans target intermediate goals required to reach the external goals. They may cover the development of a new product, a new service, a new IT system, a restructuring of finance, the refurbishing of a factory or a restructuring of the organization. An internal business plan is often developed in conjunction with a balanced scorecard or a list of critical success factors. This allows success of the plan to be measured using non-financial measures. Business plans that identify and target internal goals, but provide only general guidance on how they will be met are called strategic plans.
It was mentioned above about setting up business goals. What are these business goals? According to Wikipedia again, the business goals may be defined for for-profit or for non-profit organizations. For-profit business plans typically focus on financial goals, such as profit or creation of wealth. Non-profit and government agency business plans tend to focus on organizational mission which is the basis for their governmental status or their non-profit, tax-exempt status, respectively—although non-profits may also focus on optimizing revenue. In non-profit organizations, creative tensions may develop in the effort to balance mission with "margin" (or revenue).

Business plans are considered as a decision-making tool that will be very helpful in an organization. As I have surf the internet, I have learned that the content of a certain business plan is not fixed for the reason that the contents and its formats are identified by the goals and the audience or the stakeholders. Every business plan should contain the necessary information needed in deciding whether they would pursue their goal or not. Usually, a business plan is very confidential and essential. Considered as confidential since the structure of a business plan includes some important issues about the company like marketing plan, market analysis, financial plan, operations plan, competitive analysis and more. It is measured as a top secret of a certain organization. If you are a business analyst and you come up with a good business plan, it’s already a plus and very helpful for the company to grow and be competitive. Having a business plan doesn’t mean you can already assure your success but it’s a guarantee that if you have a good and flexible business plan you can lessen the failures that you may encounter.

Next is Information System Plan. What is an Information System plan? As I have surf the internet for a definition of information system plan, I have read a paper by Michael M. Gorman that is published on September 1, 1999 and published in TDAN.com on the same month and year which tackles about information system plan. As what I have read, he mentioned five distinct characteristics of a quality Information Sytem Plan before it would be useful. These are timely, useable, maintainable, quality and reproducible. He also describe the following characteristics on his paper. The Information System plan must be timely. An IS plan that is created long after it is needed is useless. In most all cases, it makes no sense to take longer to plan work than to perform the work planned. The IS plan must be useable. It must be so for all the projects as well as for each project. The IS plan should exist in sections that once adopted can be parceled out to project managers and immediately started. The IS plan must be maintainable. New business opportunities, new computers, business mergers, etc. all affect the IS plan. The IS plan must support quick changes to the estimates, technologies employed, and possibly even to the fundamental project sequences. Once these changes are accomplished, the new IS plan should be just a few computer program executions away. While the IS plan must be a quality product, no IS plan is ever perfect on the first try. As the IS plan is executed, the metrics employed to derive the individual project estimates become refined as a consequence of new hardware technologies, code generators, techniques, or faster working staff. As these changes occur, their effects should be installable into the data that supports IS plan computation. In short, the IS plan is a living document. It should be updated with every technology event, and certainly no less often than quarterly. The IS plan must be reproducible. That is, when its development activities are performed by any other staff, the IS plan produced should essentially be the same. The IS plan should not significantly vary by staff assigned.

Every organizations nowadays has its own systems and own strategic plans. And because of the fast-evolving changes in our environment nowadays, oragnizations must have a flexible strategic plans to able to adapt the possible transformations. As what I have understood after reading the said paper, information system plan is the plan by which databases and all the information systems of a particular enterprise is accomplished in a timely manner. This kind of project decides the flow for the implementation of a specific information system. Mr. Gorman said that the goal of the strategy is to deliver the most valuable business informtion at the earliest time possible in the most cost-effective manner. The focus or the scope of an IS plan is not only on one information system but the entire information systems for the organization.An information system involve many essential functionalities and procedures therefore a company must have a good and adaptable information system plan to be able to have a good and reliable business information as an output.

Planning for an information system begins with an identification of what the company and the customers needs. An information system plan can also be compared as a strategic planning in a management or organization. In developing an IS plan you need to formalized your objectives, priorities and authorization and must identify what specific project you wnat in the future and especially, it should be flexible so that for some circumstances it can be adjusted if necessary. I agree with the five distinct chracteristics that Gorman have identified. The value of having an information system in an enterprise is very essential and useful. And a company’s IS plan should evolved, maintained and flexible with the fats chanigng environment.

Now, what is the nature of relationship between the two mentioned plans above? Definitely, information system plan is related with business plan. One thing that never chnage is that things are always changing. New hardwares and softwares are appearing every now and then. That is why company’s are trying to be competitive and be updated of the new trends in the world of Information Technology. In connecting the two said plans is just the same when we compare business with IT. Business involves IT while IT has to do with business. As a result, both of them can benefit with each other. Typically, business plans in an organization are associated with information system plans. When planning for the company’s benefit, there are a lot of things that needs to be consider like: the vision,mission, goals and objectives of the organization, the confidential and essential informations which includes the marketing plan, market analysis, financial plan, operations plan, competitive analysis, the information system of the organization and the etc.

Information System department, Management Information System or IT depatrment are just part of an organization that is mostly responsible for the information system and the systems development and maintenance. It plays a vital role of the company. When there are some changes in your business the IS should adapt that change. So, when an organizations business plans change there would also be some changes with your IS plan that is why you need to have a good and flexible plan for possible circumstances that the company will surely benefit. Both plans should be able to achieve the vision, mission and goals of the organization and also both should be concern with the current structure and operations of the organizations environment. Information System helps the organizations business processes through automation. By automating some parts of the business processes it makes the work more easier and a lesser errors and redundancies may encounter. That is why the organization’s IS plan should align with the organization’s Business Plan. I have mentioned earlier taht is actualy according to my source that business plan must contain the background information of the team attempting to reach the business goals. An information system department is considered as one team in an organization whose task is concerned with the hardwares and softwares of the organization. That is why business plan connects with the IS plan.

Business plan involves the financial and operations plan. When we do an Information System Plan for an organization it is always acquired with cost. Cost for the study and analysis in building up an IS plan and the money that would merely engage when your Information System plan wuould be implemented. The cost for new hardwares, new softwares,payment for the systems analyst, programmers will also be reflected in the business plan. The fact that cost is always there but it is also for the benefit of the organization.

Unquestionably, the use of the information technology in businesses helps the organization in achieving its goals and its already a plus for an organization to be aggressive and competitive enough in the field of global market. Whether it is a business plan or an Information Sytem plan, we sould always remember that in planning we always have to make sure that our plans are useable, maintainable, quality, flexible and understandable. No one perfects a plan on the first try. There is a what we could Strategic Information Systems Planning where in it is the process of ensuring the alignment between an Information System plan and its objectives and a business plan with its objectives also. It is the method of identifying an Information System that will provide the organization with a competitive edge with the other organizations.That is why the two diffreent plans are actually connected. Don’t limit yourself with the resources that is present and would be helpful in developing your plan. And make sure that your plan would be a great help in leading your organization in to success.


References:
www.wikipedia.com
http://www.tdan.com/view-articles/5262