Assignment 4

You were invited by the university president to prepare an IS plan for the university, discuss what are the steps in order to expedite the implementation of the IS Plan.

Information System Plan

In a very broad sense, the term information system is frequently used to refer to the interaction between people, processes, data and technology. In this sense, the term is used to refer not only to the information and communication technology (ICT) an organization uses, but also to the way in which people interact with this technology in support of business processes.
Some make a clear distinction between information systems, ICT and business processes. Information systems are distinct from information technology in that an information system is typically seen as having an ICT component. Information systems are also different from business processes. Information systems help to control the performance of business processes.
Alter argues for an information system as a special type of work system. A work system is a system in which humans and/or machines perform work using resources (including ICT) to produce specific products and/or services for customers. An information system is a work system whose activities are devoted to processing (capturing, transmitting, storing, retrieving, manipulating and displaying)information .
Part of the difficulty in defining the term information system is due to vagueness in the definition of related terms such as system and information. Beynon-Davies argues for a clearer terminology based in systemics and semiotics. He defines an information system as an example of a system concerned with the manipulation of signs. An information system is a type of socio-technical system. An information system is a mediating construct between actions and technology .
As such, information systems inter-relate with data systems on the one hand and activity systems on the other. An information system is a form of communication system in which data represent and are processed as a form of social memory. An information system can also be considered a semi-formal language which supports human decision making and action.

A business application of the computer. It is made up of the database, application programs and manual and machine procedures. It also encompasses the computer systems that do the processing.

Processing the Data

The database stores the subjects of the business (master files) and its activities (transaction files). The application programs provide the data entry, updating, query and report processing.

The Procedures

The manual procedures document how data are obtained for input and how the system's output is distributed. Machine procedures instruct the computer how to perform scheduled activities, in which the output of one program is automatically fed into another.

Transaction Processing

The daily work is the online, interactive processing of the business transactions and updating of customer, inventory and vendor files (master files).

Batch Processing

At the end of the day or other period, programs print reports and update files that were not updated on a daily basis. Periodically, files must be updated for routine maintenance such as adding and deleting employees and making changes to product descriptions.

Strategic Information Systems Planning

Strategic information systems planning, or SISP, is based on two core arguments. The first is that, at a minimum, a firm’s information systems investments should be aligned with the overall business strategy, and in some cases may even become an emerging source of competitive advantage. While no one disagrees with this, operations management researchers are just starting to study how this alignment takes place and what the measurable benefits are. An issue under examination is how a manufacturer’s business strategy, characterized as either “market focused” or “operations focused,” affects its ability to garner efficiency versus customer service benefits from its ERP investments.
The second core argument behind SISP is that companies can best achieve IS-based alignment or competitive advantage by following a proactive, formal and comprehensive process that includes the development of broad organizational information requirements. This is in contrast to a “reactive” strategy, in which the IS group sits back and responds to other areas of the business only when a need arises. Such a process is especially relevant to ERP investments, given their costs and long-term impact. Seegars, Grover and Teng (1) have identified six dimensions that define an excellent SISP process (notice that many of these would apply to the strategic planning process in other areas as well):

1. Comprehensiveness

Comprehensiveness is “the extent to which an organization attempts to be exhaustive or inclusive in making and integrating strategic decisions”.

2. Formalization

Formalization is “the existence of structures, techniques, written procedures, and policies that guide the planning process”.

3. Focus

Focus is “the balance between creativity and control orientations inherent within the strategic planning system”. An innovative orientation emphasizes innovative solutions to deal with opportunities and threats. An integrative orientation emphasizes control, as implemented through budgets, resource allocation, and asset management.

4. Top-down flow

SISP should be initiated by top managers, with the aid of support staff.

5. Broad participation

Even though the planning flow is top-down, participation must involve multiple functional areas and, as necessary, key stakeholders at lower levels of the organization.

6. High consistency

SISP should be characterized by frequent meetings and reassessments of the overall strategy.
The recommendations found in the SISP literature have been echoed in the operations management literature. It has been suggested that firms should institutionalize a formal top-down planning process for linking information systems strategy to business needs as they move toward evolution in their management orientation, planning, organization, and control aspects of the IT function.

The Steps in Order to Expedite the Implementation of the IS Plan

Step 1.Getting Started

The first step in a consumer information project is to lay the foundation for the project—financially, politically, and organizationally. While this may sound obvious, many projects fail because sponsors do not take the time to prepare. They dive right into the process of collecting and reporting data, only to be taken by surprise when someone objects to the project or the money runs out.
On the other hand, some projects never even get off the ground because the sponsors can't move beyond the planning process. The key to moving beyond the organizational stage is to develop and stick to a schedule that will force decisions and push the participants forward in the process.

Step 2.Collecting and Analyzing Data

During the planning stage (Step 1), sponsors choose what types of quality measures to share with the audience.
For guidance, go to Choose Quality Measures.
For many sponsors, the next step in a consumer information project is to gather that data and conduct the appropriate analyses so that these measures have meaning for consumers.
For more information on this step, choose one of the following topics:
• Where You Can Get Information on Quality.
• How to Know When You'll Need Help.
• How to Skip This Step.
• Making Sure Information Is Credible.

Where You Can Get Information on Quality

The source of quality information depends on the kind of data you need, which depends on the nature of the project you undertake. For some projects, particularly those involving health plans, standardized information is readily available, with little need for additional analysis. For projects involving provider groups, on the other hand, it may be necessary to collect and process raw data that can be turned into useful information.

How to Know When You'll Need Help

You are not likely to need help if the information you want is available from a reliable, trustworthy source that has already processed the data. In that case, you need only request or purchase the data and prepare it to meet the needs of your audience. For instance, several State agencies use the HEDIS® results (including averages and benchmarks)
provided by the NCQA's Quality Compass database to create a quality report on all the plans in the State.

Analysis Needed? Consider Some Assistance

If the data exist but require additional analysis to be useful to your audience, you may need assistance from a vendor qualified to conduct the type of analysis you need. For example, a purchasing coalition that offers five health plans to its members' employees could use HEDIS® results to calculate benchmarks or averages for those plans only. While some sponsors can handle an analysis of quality data on their own, others would benefit from expert advice and technical know-how.

Doing Your Own Data Collection and Analysis? Hire Help

If you want to collect and analyze quality data yourself, you would be well-advised to contract with a knowledgeable, experienced vendor. Few sponsors have the technical know-how, the manpower, or the clinical knowledge to generate their own data and do their own analyses. If, for instance, you want to use the CAHPS® survey kit to gather data on your employees' experiences with care, you have to rely on an outside contractor.
The CAHPS® protocol recommends that the survey be conducted by an independent vendor that will take responsibility for collecting the data, analyzing it, and presenting the results in a manner consistent with the CAHPS® methodology.
Sponsors may also need outside help when they combine measures into categories, calculate summary scores, or show relative performance; consultants with statistical expertise can ensure that the sponsors don't misrepresent the performance of competing plans.

How to Skip this Step

Of course, not all sponsors want to or can gather quality information on their own. While you may start out with the intention of doing everything yourself, it is not always practical or affordable to obtain the data you need when you need it. It may also be redundant and thus wasteful to ask health care organizations for information they have already given to someone else.
Rather than follow this path, you may prefer to use information that another party has already prepared, or direct consumers to data provided by others. In many markets, organizations such as regulatory agencies, purchasers, accrediting organizations, and provider associations are collecting health care quality data on a regular basis. Examples of useful sources of quality information include Medicare, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, and possibly agencies in your own State government.
This approach is efficient and offers sponsors the ability to present more data than they could have ever gathered on their own. The potential downside, however, is that you will probably need to make some compromises. That is, the information made available by someone else may not be exactly what you want, ready when you want it, or applicable to the precise information needs of your audience.

Making Sure Information Is Credible

From your perspective as a sponsor hoping to educate and inform the public, the validity and accuracy of data are critical. If consumers do not trust that the data truly reflect the quality of care they can expect, all your efforts are wasted.
To ensure the credibility of your data, make sure you understand the methodology that was used to collect and analyze it. Some tools, such as the CAHPS® Survey and Reporting Kit, include specific instructions for sponsors regarding what they need to understand to maintain the validity of data. You do not need to understand all of the technical and statistical details, but you should feel confident about the following:
• The information has been collected and reported in compliance with an established, tested methodology. If the task is being handled by an outside vendor, confirm that the vendor is following an accepted protocol (e.g., using an appropriate sample size).
• The analysis and interpretation of the data has been handled independently of the health care organizations. That is, while these organizations may offer helpful and necessary advice, they should not be making the final decisions.
To confirm that health care organizations have followed the standard procedures for calculating measures, consider having the measures audited or requiring audited measures. To improve the consistency of auditing criteria and processes, NCQA certifies organizations to audit HEDIS® results from health plans. Since 1999, all health plans accredited by NCQA have had to submit HEDIS® results that have been audited by an NCQA-certified vendor.
For measures other than HEDIS®, sponsors may want to consider vendors that can apply the auditing principles recommended by NCQA. To minimize inconsistencies, hire the same vendor to handle all audits and confirm that all auditors use the same criteria in their work.

Step 3. Presenting the Information

Presentation—or how you say what you have to say—plays a critical part in ensuring that your efforts to convey quality information are successful. One of the most challenging aspects of a performance measurement project is figuring out how to present the data in a way that helps consumers interpret the information and apply it to their health care-related decisions. Many sponsors have struggled with this question, only to find themselves making the same mistakes as others before them. One of the key objectives of this site is to support project sponsors in learning from the experiences of their peers as well as from the findings of researchers regarding the best ways to discuss, format, and display information on quality.

Five Key Points About Presentation
Here are the five most important things to remember about presenting information on health care quality:
1. There is no one way to do this—but there are better ways and worse ways.
At this time, there is no universally accepted approach to providing information on quality to consumers. The marketplace is full of experiments, most of which have not been evaluated. But we do know that some approaches to presenting quality information work better than others in the sense that consumers find it easier to understand the data and evaluate their options.
2. The answer that's best for you depends on who your audience is and how they'll use the information.
The way you present information—and even the information itself—should be driven by the needs of whoever is supposed to be reading it. Consumers are the focus of this Web site, but they are not the only audience for health care quality information. Sponsors can develop information for:
• Public or private purchasers.
• Non-purchasing intermediary organizations, such as consumer advocacy groups.
• Policymakers.
• Provider organizations.
• Individual providers.
• Health plans.
Each of these audiences has different needs for quality information. As a result, an approach that is appropriate for individual consumers may not be at all useful for a different audience.
For example:
• Plans and providers may want more detail in order to identify specific opportunities to improve quality.
• Policymakers, on the other hand, may want a higher level of aggregation that would reveal larger trends in the marketplace.
• Intermediary organizations and purchasers may want enough data to draw their own conclusions rather than having the information interpreted for them.
3. Data cannot be presented in a vacuum.
The context you provide (or fail to provide) for the information affects what your audience pays attention to and how they interpret it. In particular, consumers are more likely to care about the information if you can connect it to their concerns about health care and the health care system. For instance, data on ease of referrals has greater relevance to an audience that understands how a health plan may limit their access to specialists. This implies that it is not enough to provide data; a quality report must include some explanation of how the health care system works and what the data reveal about a health care organization.
4. For the typical consumer, a quality measure has no meaning on its own.
It is the sponsor's job to turn quality measures into information that consumers can easily comprehend, evaluate, and use. You can do this by doing one or more of the following:
• Grouping measures into consumer-friendly categories.
• Offering a basis for comparison, such as an average or benchmark for the market.
• Interpreting the information for your audience by making it clear which results are truly better than others.
5. The medium shapes the message.
Whether you rely on printed reports, Web sites, or live presentations, the medium you choose to deliver the information can determine how much you present and how you display it. For instance, you can offer many more layers of detail on the Web than you can in print without overwhelming your audience. A printed report, on the other hand, offers the ability to create large displays of information across multiple pages. This suggests that you will need to have some sense of what the final product will be before you can decide on a design and format for quality information.
Making Sure Your Materials Work for Your Audience
No matter how limited your resources may be, do what you can to test the materials as you develop them to make sure they are suitable for your audience. This approach allows you to identify and remedy trouble spots along the way rather than waiting until the information has been disseminated to discover any problems. Specifically, sponsors can conduct ongoing testing to assess:
• Whether consumers can read the information easily.
• Whether they can understand it.
• Whether the content is appropriate for your audience.
• Whether people are interested in your content (i.e., its salience).
• Whether consumers can use your materials for the purpose for which they are intended.
• Whether they can navigate through the materials to find the information they want.
Techniques for this kind of iterative testing include one-on-one interviews as well as focus groups.

Step 4. Disseminating Information

Long before you have the information to distribute, you need to be thinking about how and when to get it into the hands of consumers. Sponsors should ask themselves:
• What can we do to ensure that our audience is aware of our information and motivated to use it?
• When is the best time to make the information available? Is this timing realistic?
• What channels can we use to distribute the information to our audience? How can we make sure they see it?
• How should we package the information? Should it stand alone or be incorporated into other information?
The answers to these questions will affect how much time you have to produce the report as well as the kinds of measures and depth of content that you can include. For example:
• If the goal is to release a performance report in early fall so that consumers have it in time for the open enrollment season, you may not have enough time to conduct your own survey of enrollees but you could ask your plans to share the HEDIS® scores—which include results of the CAHPS® survey—that they have to report to NCQA by early summer.
• If the most sensible way to package the performance information is to integrate it into open enrollment materials, you will have to deal with space constraints that would not be necessary in a stand-alone document. This may affect the way you present the data or how much data you can include.

Step 5. Supporting Consumers

For many sponsors of consumer information projects, the job ends once the reports have been distributed. But both experienced sponsors and researchers testing consumer behavior have demonstrated that it is not enough to give consumers data. They need help in interpreting the information on quality, integrating it with other relevant data (such as costs), and using it to make decisions. Without this help, many simply ignore the information they have, or worse, use it inappropriately.
Strategies for providing "decision support" include the following:
• Refer consumers to consumer advocates and other "information intermediaries" who can help your audience understand and use the information you provide. You may need to provide those intermediaries with training, scripts, and documents they can share with consumers. For example, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), formerly the Health Care Financing Administration, funds a Nationwide program called SHIP (State Health Insurance Assistance Programs) to help seniors work through insurance issues and answer their questions.
• Offer consumers a worksheet that guides them through the process of evaluating their options. Worksheets help the reader keep track of the information needed to make decisions. While they can be too complicated for some consumers, they are a valuable tool for the information intermediaries who may assist consumers in reaching decisions.
• Design computer-based systems that facilitate decisionmaking by allowing the user to weight different factors or by ranking the available choices based on the user's response to a set of questions.
To determine which strategy will work best for your audience, you may want to consult with representative consumers and/or appropriate intermediaries. Also, be sure to evaluate your support strategy once it is implemented to find out how well it is serving the needs of your audience and how you can improve it.

Step 6. Evaluating the Project

Finally, the last step for sponsors is to evaluate the extent to which the project achieved its objectives. This could be as simple as asking whether consumers are aware of the information you produced or as complicated as finding out whether and how consumers used the information to help make decisions.
Evaluations are important for internal purposes because they enable you to determine how effective your project is and how it can be improved. But they are equally critical for external reasons. First, being able to demonstrate that the project has had a positive impact will help you secure political support and continued funding. In addition, an evaluation allows other sponsors to learn from your experience.
The following methods are commonly used to evaluate projects:
• Focus groups.
• Surveys.
• Usability testing.
• Analysis of changes in enrollment patterns.

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_system
http://scm.ncsu.edu/public/facts/facs060329.html
http://www.talkingquality.gov/docs/section1/1_2.htm

Assignment 5

In the spectrum of organizational change, which is the most radical type of change: automation, rationalization of procedures, business reengineering, or paradigm shifts?

Organizational Change

Companies that are undergoing or that have undergone a transformation. This keyword should always be used in conjunction with "Success Story" or "Experiment" or "Failed Experiment."

Organizational change is an ongoing process in order to bring the organizational systems and processes in line with the factors prevailing in the external and internal environment of the organization. The forces of organizational change include internal and external forces. Organization Development (OD) refers to the framework consisting of planned-change interventions involving human interactions that seeks to improve organizational effectiveness. OD is an effective tool to manage change. The paper discusses the dynamics of change management.

Organizational change initiatives to realign company objectives, capital and resources become necessary when the company shifts its strategic focus in response to exogenous market forces or events that require it to examine the way it does business and implement a new framework to accommodate changed goals and objectives. Despite this re-orientation, not all companies experience a smooth transition to the new paradigm.

Managing Organizational Change

It is important to have a change in the organization. In addition, such change should be successful and must contribute towards the success of the organization. The main objective of this paper is to characterize the prevalence of the change process in organizations and understand what occurs during organizational change and the forces responsible for unplanned organizational change. Organization change is a planned or unplanned transformation in an organization’s structure, technology, or people. However, there are internal as well as external factors forcing the change. Besides this, there are critical issues in the organizational development. One should be able to overcome such issues and led to effective change in the organization.

Learning Objectives For Organizational Change

Organizational change is important to usher in long-term success in an organization. A change entails realignment of organizational systems and processes. Managing change involves institutionalizing the philosophy of change in the organization. Effective change management entails creating a definitive vision and managing the transition to the desired future state.

Organizational Change And Stress Management

The forces prevailing in internal or external environment of an organization necessitate organizational change. The prime challenge before organizations is to fully institutionalize the philosophy of the change. The organizational change can be either planned or unplanned. After the change has been effected, initially, there is a resistance to change, primarily, because people have fear of the unknown. This can be overcome by effectively teaching the employees about the philosophy and the reasons for the change. The paper examines change management. In this context, stress management is also discussed.

Steps in the Organizational Change Process
• Assess need for change
• Decide on the change
• Implement change
• Evaluate change

The Three Greatest Barriers to Organizational Change

The need for rapid organizational change is a fact of life in today's business environment. While there may be a few companies whose leaders are committed to a belief that it is good for everyone to "shake things up" from time to time, most organizational change is undertaken to accomplish key strategic goals. No matter how necessary change seems to upper management, many barriers must be broken down if a planned strategic change is to be implemented successfully. The key to successful change is in the planning and the implementation. The three greatest barriers to organizational change are most often the following.

1. Inadequate Culture-shift Planning. Most companies are good at planning changes in reporting structure, work area placement, job responsibilities, and administrative structure. Organizational charts are commonly revised again and again. Timelines are established, benchmarks are set, transition teams are appointed, etc. Failure to foresee and plan for resultant cultural change, however, is also common. When the planning team is too narrowly defined or too focused on objective analysis and critical thinking, it becomes too easy to lose sight of the fact that the planned change will affect people. Even at work, people make many decisions on the basis of feelings and intuition. When the feelings of employees are overlooked, the result is often deep resentment because some unrecognized taboo or tradition has not been duly respected.

2. Lack of Employee Involvement. People have an inherent fear of change. In most strategic organizational change, at least some employees will be asked to assume different responsibilities or focus on different aspects of their knowledge or skill. The greater the change a person is asked to make, the more pervasive that person's fear will be. There will be fear of change. More important, however, there will be fear of failure in the new role. Involving employees as soon as possible in the change effort, letting them create as much of the change as is possible and practical is key to a successful change effort. As employees understand the reasons for the change and have an opportunity to "try the change on for size" they more readily accept and support the change.

3. Flawed Communication Strategies. Ideal communication strategies in situations of significant organizational change must attend to the message, the method of delivery, the timing, and the importance of information shared with various parts of the organization. Many leaders believe that if they tell people what they (the leaders) feel they need to know about the change, then everyone will be on board and ready to move forward. In reality, people need to understand why the change is being made, but more importantly, how the change is likely to affect them. A big picture announcement from the CEO does little to help people understand and accept change. People want to hear about change from their direct supervisor. A strategy of engaging direct supervision and allowing them to manage the communication process is the key to a successful change communication plan.

Radical Type of Organizational Change

• Automation

Automation Planning and Organizational Change: A Functional Model for Developing a Systems Plan

Automation represents one of the greatest changes a library can undergo. An automation plan must not only produce an optimum system, but prepare the staff, institution and clientele for far-reaching change. This change can be accommodated by a functional model consisting of three phases: 1) organization and overview, 2) project expansion, and 3) project consolidation and preparationof the system plan. An educational program is the centerpiece of the process.

• Rationalization of procedures

Report on Rationalization of Procedures: (for) Building Approvals and Completion Certificates

The Committee deliberated upon the procedures for grant of building plan approvals and completion certificates including the role of the Delhi Urban Arts Commission therein. The consensus of the opinion was that the present procedures involving a multiplicity of authorities were resulting in considerable harassment and delays. The present procedures of scrutiny of building plans, issue of C & D forms and completion certificate is very cumbersome and involved delays at each stage due to site inspections and site reports. Further, since there was no single person specifically responsible for adherence to regulations at the approval or completion stage, owners with the connivance of building officials and unscrupulous architects, indulged in violations for financial advantage. Thus while honest owners are harassed, unscrupulous architects, indulged in violations for financial advantage. Thus while honest owners are harassed, unscrupulous ones get away with serious violations.

• Business reengineering

Business process reengineering (BPR) is the analysis and redesign of workflow within and between enterprises. BPR reached its heyday in the early 1990's when Michael Hammer and James Champy published their best-selling book, "Reengineering the Corporation". The authors promoted the idea that sometimes radical redesign and reorganization of an enterprise (wiping the slate clean) was necessary to lower costs and increase quality of service and that information technology was the key enabler for that radical change. Hammer and Champy felt that the design of workflow in most large corporations was based on assumptions about technology, people, and organizational goals that were no longer valid. They suggested seven principles of reengineering to streamline the work process and thereby achieve significant levels of improvement in quality, time management, and cost:

1. Organize around outcomes, not tasks.
2. Identify all the processes in an organization and prioritize them in order of redesign urgency.
3. Integrate information processing work into the real work that produces the information.
4. Treat geographically dispersed resources as though they were centralized.
5. Link parallel activities in the workflow instead of just integrating their results.
6. Put the decision point where the work is performed, and build control into the process.
7. Capture information once and at the source.

The impact of BPR on organizational performance

The two cornerstones of any organization are the people and the processes. If individuals are motivated and working hard, yet the business processes are cumbersome and non-essential activities remain, organizational performance will be poor. Business Process Reengineering is the key to transforming how people work. What appear to be minor changes in processes can have dramatic effects on cash flow, service delivery and customer satisfaction. Even the act of documenting business processes alone will typically improve organizational efficiency by 10%.

How to implement a BPR project

The best way to map and improve the organization's procedures is to take a top down approach, and not undertake a project in isolation. That means:
• Starting with mission statements that define the purpose of the organization and describe what sets it apart from others in its sector or industry.
• Producing vision statements which define where the organization is going, to provide a clear picture of the desired future position.
• Build these into a clear business strategy thereby deriving the project objectives.
• Defining behaviours that will enable the organization to achieve its' aims.
• Producing key performance measures to track progress.
• Relating efficiency improvements to the culture of the organization
• Identifying initiatives that will improve performance.

• Paradigm shifts

A paradigm shift is an often radical change of paradigm. It is the successful new theory which explains a phenomenon or phenomena that the previous theory fails to. The term was first used by Thomas Kuhn in his famous 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
Paradigm shift (or revolutionary science) is the term first used by Thomas Kuhn in his influential book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) to describe a change in basic assumptions within the ruling theory of science. It is in contrast to his idea of normal science.
The term paradigm shift, as a change in a fundamental model of events, has since become widely applied to many other realms of human experience as well, even though Kuhn himself restricted the use of the term to the hard sciences. According to Kuhn, "A paradigm is what members of a scientific community, and they alone, share." (The Essential Tension, 1977). Unlike a normal scientist, Kuhn held, "a student in the humanities has constantly before him a number of competing and incommensurable solutions to these problems, solutions that he must ultimately examine for himself." (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions). Once a paradigm shift is complete, a scientist cannot, for example, posit the possibility that miasma causes disease or that ether carries light. In contrast, a critic in the Humanities can choose to adopt a 19th-century theory of poetics, for instance.

A paradigm is our perception of reality, our view of the world. It is our interpretation of events based on previous teaching we have received. If our paradigm is based only on our input from the media of conventional newspapers, magazines, radio, television, Hollywood films, public education etc., may God help us, for we will only see things the way they, the elite and wealthy rulers of this world who control these sources of information, want us to see things! This is often the opposite of the Truth. A paradigm shift means to have a sudden change in perception, a sudden change in point of view, of how you see things. Hopefully this change will be in the right direction. (Based on Stephen R. Covey's definition in "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People")

Sources:
http://dictionary.bnet.com/definition/organizational+change.html
http://searchcio.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid182_gci536451,00.html
http://www.architexturez.net/+/subject-listing/000073.shtmlhttp://www.emeraldinsight.com/10.1108/eb047604
http://www.teamtechnology.co.uk/business-process-reengineering.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradigm_shift

Assignment 6

Identify and discuss the steps for "critical success factors" approach?


Critical success factor

Critical Success Factor (CSF) is the term for an element that is necessary for an organization or project to achieve its mission. It is a critical factor or activity required for ensuring the success of your business. The term was initially used in the world of data analysis, and business analysis. For example, a CSF for a successful Information Technology (IT) project is user involvement.

So many important matters can compete for your attention in business that it's often difficult to see the "wood for the trees". What's more, it can be extremely difficult to get everyone in the team pulling in the same direction and focusing on the true essentials.
That's where Critical Success Factors (CSFs) can help. CSFs are the essential areas of activity that must be performed well if you are to achieve the mission, objectives or goals for your business or project.

By identifying your Critical Success Factors, you can create a common point of reference to help you direct and measure the success of your business or project.
As a common point of reference, CSFs help everyone in the team to know exactly what's most important. And this helps people perform their own work in the right context and so pull together towards the same overall aims.

The idea of CSFs was first presented by D. Ronald Daniel in the 1960s. It was then built on and popularized a decade later by John F. Rockart, of MIT's Sloan School of Management, and has since been used extensively to help businesses implement their strategies and projects.
Inevitably, the CSF concept has evolved, and you may have seen it implemented in different ways. This article provides a simple definition and approach based on Rockart's original ideas.

The advantages of identifying CSFs are that they are simple to understand; they help focus attention on major concerns; they are easy to communicate to coworkers; they are easy to monitor; and they can be used in concert with strategic planning methodologies. Using critical success factors as an isolated event does not represent critical strategic thinking. But when used in conjunction with a planning process, identifying CSFs is extremely important because it keeps people focused. Clarifying the priority order of CSFs, measuring results, and rewarding superior performance will improve the odds for long-term success as well.

Critical success factors cannot be specifically defined for the masses because success can be defined quite differently by each individual, and for the goal at hand. Therefore, in order to identify critical success factors, it is first necessary to come to terms with your own personal definition of success. Each individual’s own definition of will be influenced by several key factors:

• Success is subject to individual interpretation based on upbringing, past experiences, role models, personal motivations and goals. For some it might be to own a home in an upscale neighborhood, while for others it might be a career in the Peace Corps. Carefully contemplate your definition of success based on your values—not what your brother-in-law or Madison Avenue tells you it is. Your own definition of personal success directly influences critical factors leading to that success.

• Your view of success will change at various times throughout your life. For example, what might be deemed successful in college or on your first job is very different from successfully raising a family or comfortably retiring in the Caribbean. Your definition of success will continue to change, so don’t make the error of pursuing an outdated version of it. Success factors will change over time.

• Personal success is sometimes measurable and sometimes not. Accumulating a certain amount of wealth is one way to measure success, but it is not the only way; a successful marriage may be far more meaningful to many people and can only be measured by how the two partners feel about each other as the years go by.

• Very few people achieve success accidentally. Most people who achieve success first defined it then planned for it; they set a goal to achieve it. Critical success factors change with the goal.

There are four steps of CSFs:

Industry CSF's follows from specific industry characteristics.

Different industries have different CSFs. Even within same industry CSFs are not identical from company to company. For example:
Objective: Achieve market share locally of 15%.
CSF: Increasing of customers quantity, increasing of competitiveness versus other local shops.

Strategy CSF's follows from the selected competitive strategy of the business.

It depends on how company positions itself on market, what is the strategy of business and development.
Objective: Decrease time of client servicing to 50%.
CSF: Install PC-ba
sed customer service system.

Environmental CSF's follows from economic or technological changes.

These factors represent environment in which company operates. They include things like the business climate, the economy, competitors, sociopolitical issues, technological improving and so on.
Objective: Expand assortment of goods to attract more consumers.
CSF: Discovery of new required local suppliers, arrangement of win-win relationship with them.

Temporal CSF's follows from internal organizational needs and changes.

These are temporary conditions or situations in which the organization must achieve success in order to ensure safety of successful accomplishment companies main goals.

A plan should be implemented that considers a platform for growth and profits as well as takes into consideration the following critical success factors:

• Money: positive cash flow, revenue growth, and profit margins.
• Your future: Acquiring new customers and/or distributors.
• Customer satisfaction: How happy they are.
• Quality: How good is your product and service?
• Product or service development: What's new that will increase business with existing customers and attract new ones?
• Intellectual capital: Increasing what you know is profitable.
• Strategic relationships: New sources of business, products and outside revenue.
• Employee attraction and retention: Your ability to extend your reach.
• Sustainability: Your personal ability to keep it all going.

The 5 Critical Success Factors in Business

There are five business success factors (critically important core profit principles) that all businesses share - both small business and large. In times of economic crisis like these, they are essential. And, they can make the difference between just getting by - or you getting ahead in your business.

Here, we'll explore what they are - and how you can put them to work for you in your own business. These principles form the basis for most success in business achieved by entrepreneurs, business owners, business managers, and professionals. Without following them at least to some extent, you'll find business to be a struggle - and much less rewarding than it could be.

As you read this, see how well your own thinking and actions in business stack up to these five core principles:

1) Profits are essential for your business to succeed - they are what pays you.

You don't have to look far to find examples of businesses imploding due to lack of profits. (The current banking and financial crisis immediately comes to mind... Or, remember the dot-com bubble?... the spend, spend, spend your way to market share type of thinking.) And, those are just some larger, more visible examples... small businesses are at even more risk.

Ultimately, profits are the essential key ingredient for business survival - and your focus on them is key. The very existence of your business depends on a steady-stream of profits... to pay your bills... your salary... your employees... your vendors and suppliers... and to secure your financial future.

Profits make the difference between the success or failure of your enterprise. They're the essence of being in business and are the fruits of your labor. Without profits (or deep pockets), you can't last long.

2) Most businesses miss profit opportunities on almost every transaction or customer/client relationship - and are limiting their incomes without even knowing it.

Here again, you won't have to look far for examples. Just think of all the leads that don't get proper follow-up, the customers/clients that receive only occasional communications (if any), the up-sells, cross-sells and add-on sales that could have been part of a given transaction, the unrealized intangible opportunities that exist in your customer/client or vendor/supplier relationships - and you can begin to see a sad pattern.

It's a pattern of profit opportunities gone by... wasted utilization of assets... or under-realized profit potential in your transactions. In many cases, business owners, managers and professionals are completely unaware of their lost profit opportunities.

Make your expenditure of time, energy, capital, and resources produce more for you - and capture the money that most businesses miss. Think about your sales, marketing, and advertising process as a total package - and create, test, and put in place processes that take advantage of strengths in your business.

3) Stability and security comes from creating a "Web of Profits" in your business.

Do you have a number of different sources within your business to support you? Or, are you relying on only a few? Or, even worse, relying on only ONE primary source of profit?

The majority of businesses rely on fewer than five profit sources - and think in terms of "profit centers." In other words, a collection of different channels of profit from individual sales of products or services (retail), bulk sales (wholesale), joint ventures, ownership interests, licensing and/or other arrangements, and so on.

But, when you create a "Web of Profits" in your business - that is, an interconnected approach that integrates a variety of profit sources and activities together into a single unit of functionality - you stand a better chance of leveraging your business in new ways.

4) The focus on Increasing Profits is more beneficial than the focus on Cost-Cutting.

In times of recession or economic crisis, sometimes cost-cutting is the only logical and sane option. If you're bleeding... you stop the bleeding before anything else. But, when it comes to cost-cutting, the effect is temporary and fleeting. Once you've drastically reduced your expenses, any additional cost-cutting might hurt your business's effectiveness and viability.

Crisis management aside, it's much better to focus on getting more business, to create new profit sources, run better promotions, do better advertising and marketing, and generally operate your business in a more customer/client oriented way.

That's what eases the pressure from high-costs... and provides you with what you need from your business. The thinking that goes into a profit-oriented focus and mindset can often provide innovative and inspirational breakthroughs in results.

5) Strategically plan for Profits - and take the specific action steps needed to implement your plan.

Being laser-focused on profits - rather than your strategic planning being primarily focused on revenue - takes you to the next level in your business plan. You'll be able to see alternative profit possibilities - and the action steps needed - so you can build them directly into your plan.

By their very nature, business plans focus on the bottom-line - and usually they just focus on the obvious sources - not necessarily on the alternative profit possibilities. And it's these alternative profits that most businesses miss... profits that could even eclipse what's being produced by your current business activities.

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_success_factor
http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newLDR_80.htm
http://www.e-competitors.com/Strategy/SBUPlanning/SBUPositioning/SBU_Critical.htm
http://www.articlesbase.com/business-articles/the-5-critical-success-factors-in-business-639661.html

Assignment 3

What are the two most frequently experienced causes of frustration of IS professionals and users while working on an IS plan?

We visited the AMS Group of Companies located at F. Torres St., Davao City for an interview regarding to our subject MIS2 assignment, include the question which is “What are the two most frequently experienced causes of frustration of IS professionals and users while working on an IS plan?”. To answer the question, we approached Mr. Gemrald R. Glibara, the M.I.S Department Head of AMS Group of Companies.

FRUSTRATION

Frustration a common emotional response to opposition. Related to anger and disappointment, it arises from the perceived resistance to the fulfillment of individual will. The greater the obstruction, and the greater the will, the more the frustration is likely to be. Causes of frustration may be internal or external. In people, internal frustration may arise from challenges in fulfilling personal goals and desires, instinctual drives and needs, or dealing with perceived deficiencies, such as a lack of confidence or fear of social situations. Conflict can also be an internal source of frustration; when one has competing goals that interfere with one another, it can create cognitive dissonance. External causes of frustration involve conditions outside an individual, such as a blocked road or a difficult task. While coping with frustration, some individuals may engage in passive-aggressive behavior, making it difficult to identify the original cause(s) of their frustration, as the responses are indirect. A more direct, and common response, is a propensity towards aggression.

This is the point where a lot of people will just say, “I Quit” and give up. Before you do though, here’s 8 ways you can blast through any frustration:

1. Ask Yourself, “What Is Working in This Situation?”

Even if feels like nothing is working, look closely and you will probably find at least something that is going right. So, that’s good. You’ve found something that’s working. Now, how do you improve it? By asking this question, you’ve taken yourself out of the negative mindset of “it’s hopeless” and are back to focusing on the positive.
There's something that’s working and that will give you a clue of what direction to focus on. You may find that even if your previous issues come up you’ll be able to resolve them in the process of concentrating on your improvements.

2. Keep an Accomplishments Log

Write down everything you accomplish in a log. If you do it in a monthly format you will be able to see all that you have accomplished in just one month. You may be surprised by how much you have done. If you realize there’s not much on the list, it may open your eyes to the fact that you may be procrastinating more than working or that you are using too much of your energy going in too many directions and that you need to focus more. Hopefully, you will have lots of items on your list then you can see that even though it may not feel like it, you are moving forwards. The log will also help to highlight where you were the most effective and where you need to work harder.

3. Focus On What You Want to Happen

Go back to the big picture. What is the desired outcome? Sometimes, we get so wrapped up in one problem and trying to solve it that we forget what we were originally trying to accomplish. Try not to ask yourself, “Why did this happen?” Asking questions like that will keep you rooted in the past. It doesn’t offer a solution to the problem. The important thing is knowing the answer to the following two questions:
- What do you want to happen differently this time?”
- What do you need to do in order to get there?

4. Remove the “Noise” and Simplify

When you’re trying to solve a problem, you can get so wrapped up in trying to find a solution that you add unnecessary clutter, noise, and tasks to a project because you thought they “might” be a solution.
Working on this website, I get bombarded by offer after offer of “easy ways to run your website”, “get more traffic”, “make more money” etc. They’re just noise though and usually a waste of my time even reading them. These people are just trying to make money off of me. They have no interest in whether I succeed or not. When people are frustrated by how slow the hard work process is taking, they get tempted by these “here’s what you’ve been missing” and “I’ll make it easy for you” offers. Usually, it ends up that if you do get tempted by the offers you discover 6 months down the road that if you had just stuck with your first plan and just kept working at it, you’d be a lot further ahead by now. Not to mention richer from not having spent money on the Get Rich Quick schemes. Believe in yourself. Simplify and go back to the basics. Determine what is really necessary and remove everything else. Anything that takes your time and effort that isn’t adding value, should be eliminated.

5. Multiple Solutions

You always have options. You just need to brainstorm and figure them out. Tell yourself you need to come up with 8 possible options to what you’re dealing with. Just knowing that you have lots of options will help to make you feel better. You won’t feel like you are trapped in one negative situation. From your list, figure out the best direction and go for it.

6. Take Action

When you get into serious frustration with a problem, you tend not to want to work on it anymore. It’s hard, it’s frustrating, and you’re not getting anywhere. So, anything to avoid having to be in that situation may be far more attractive. Procrastination may start to set in. If you can keep taking steps forwards, you will probably make it past this temporary hump. As Thomas Edison said, “Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up” and “Surprises and reverses can serve as an incentive for great accomplishment.”
The other thing that can happen is that you start to spend a lot of time worrying. Worrying is a definite way of energy and does not move you in a forwards direction. Only taking action will. Once you start moving forwards again, you will most likely find that you worried for no reason.

7. Visualize a Positive Outcome to the Situation

A lot of times you can get stuck on focusing on what you don’t want to happen or fearing the absolute worst thing that could happen. The top athletes of the world will imagine themselves competing flawlessly over and over again. There is no room for failure in their minds. This is what you need to focus on as well. See yourself achieving your desired outcome. What will it look like? What will it feel like? What will you say? How will you feel? Take the time to visualize it and really feel it. It will inspire you to keep moving forwards.

8. Stay Positive

Things are usually not as bad as they first appear. Sometimes, things seem much worse simply because we’re tired or mentally drained. Taking a break and remembering to keep your sense of humour can also help. This time of frustration will pass. A positive mind is far more open to solutions and answers than a negative one that thinks it’s just “hopeless” and thinks “what’s the use?” A closed mind will not be able to see the possible solutions when they do come along. Stay positive.
As with any problem, the solution is to figure out what your options are, decide on a plan, focus, and then take action. By using the above 8 steps, you should find that you’re running into fewer problems and feeling less frustration. Instead, you may find that you’re running into opportunities and you know exactly how to take advantage of them.


According to him, the two most frequently experienced causes of frustration of IS professionals and users while working on an IS plan are:

In our company which is the AMS Group of Companies, according to them the two most frequently experienced causes of frustration of IS professionals and users while working on an IS plan are:


1. Lack of Support / Resistant to changes

According to Mr. Glibara, in any groups you cannot expect that all are adaptive to changes which he consider that as one of the frustrations as an IT professional. It is really hard to purse IS plans when the users themselves resist for changes, that’s the challenging part of being a project manager. You cannot please everyone, he added.

No matter whether a change is of major proportions or is objectively rather small, the change manager
must anticipate that people in the organization are going to find reasons to resist changes. It is a basic tenet of human behaviour that Any belief or value that has been previously successful in meeting needs will resist change. This applies even if there are better more successful alternatives to meet those needs.

Employee resistance

Participants gave a variety of reasons for resistance by employees and managers. The top-five reasons for employee resistance were:

1. Lack of understanding around the vision and need for change.

Participants indicated that the primary reason for employee resistance was that employees did not understand the vision of this particular change project. Employees did not clearly understand why the change was happening, nor did they have adequate knowledge regarding the change itself. Employees did not have the answer to the question, “what’s in it for me?” – or WIIFM. This could include, "Will I have a job?," "How will it impact my daily work?," "How will I benefit from the change?".

2. Comfort with the status quo and fear of the unknown.

Participants indicated that employees tended to be complacent, or that the current way of doing business had been in place for a long time. The current processes and systems seemed fine to the employees, and they were opposed to the change since it forced them out of their comfort zone. Uncertainty and fear of the new system compounded the desire of employees to continue with the “old way” to which they had grown accustom.

3. Corporate history and culture.

The organization’s past performance with change projects impacted the employees’ support of the current change project. Employees were desensitized to change initiatives, as many had been introduced and failed. The project was seen merely as the “flavor of the month,” and employees expected it go away like those in the past.

4. Opposition to the new technologies, requirements and processes introduced by the change.

Many participants felt that some employees resisted the change because of opposition to the actual change itself. Employees were opposed to changes that increased the performance and process measurement of their work. The change was seen as adding unwanted work, responsibility and accountability. Lastly, some employees opposed the new processes, systems or technologies because they felt the change would not solve the problems.

5. Fear of job loss.

Employees perceived the business change as a threat to their own job security. Some employees felt that the change would eliminate the need for their job, while others were unsure of their own abilities and skills in the new environment.

Manager resistance

The top-six reasons for manager resistance to change were:

1. Loss of power and control.

The leading reason for manager resistance to change was a fear of losing power. Changes often eliminated something the manager had control of or introduced something that the manager would not have control over. Managers perceived the changes as infringements on their autonomy, and some participants indicated that the change was even perceived as a personal attack on the managers. Managers reacted to the change initiative as a "battle for turf."

2. Overload of current tasks, pressures of daily activities and limited resources.

Managers felt that the change was an additional burden. Limited resources compounded the problem. The change initiative seemed like extra work and resource strain at a time when the pressures of daily activities were already high. In many projects, managers were expected to continue all of their current duties in addition to the duties of implementing the change.

3. Lack of skills and experience needed to manage the change effectively.

Managers were fearful of the new demands that would be placed on them by the business change. Several skill areas were identified as areas of concern. First, managers were uncomfortable with their role in managing the change. Some feared recrimination while others did not have the experience or tools to effectively manage their employees’ resistance. Managers also were concerned about the demands and responsibilities placed on them by the new business processes, systems or technologies.

4. Fear of job loss.

Managers felt that the business change would ultimately impact their own job security. Middle management is often the victim of large-scale business change. One participant reaffirmed this fear:
“They were eliminated in the change, so no resistance was recorded.”

5. Disagreement with the new way.

Some managers disagreed specifically with the change. They did not feel that the solution was the best approach to fixing the problem. Managers who did not play a role or provide input in the design and planning phases tended to resist the solution. Some participants felt that the resistance was due to the solution not being the idea of the manager ("not invented here").

6. Skepticism about the need for change.

Managers were not convinced of the need for change. They did not see the business issues driving the change, or they did not identify the same problems as the design team.


2. Communication Gap

He consider this gap as a cause of frustration for it is apparent in their organization. He experienced communication gap between himself and the office he is working to automate transactions. During the requirements gathering, both the office specified the functionalities to cater on the system that Mr. Gemrald will developed, after passing all the necessary documentations they came up to the development of the system. As he deployed the system, all specified functionalities were made and it is functional. As time goes by, there were functionalities that the office wanted to add which supposed to be addressed during the requirements gathering, in this case it is now cumbersome to the part of the IS professional to do some revisions and recoding when the system was actually delivered already.

Communication gap is a state that occurs when what is being said is not been communicated to the addressee properly and completely. There can be many causes of communication gap depending on where it exists. Actually Communication gap is the biggest hurdle in achieving the organizational goal and does not help at all in achievement of organizational goal. Communication gap in an organization means that the goals and objectives that are set by the top management are either not communicated to the employees of the organization at all levels or if communicated they are not been understood properly by the employees. This can be because of improper communication channels, unrealistic goals, inappropriate language etc.

Communication gap can be a major hurdle for the growth of an organization. Communication gap makes everybody on different pages and mindsets in terms of the information and updates. An organization has to ensure a smooth flow of communication all across the board. Even the duration of the passing the information matters. Information delayed is sometimes equivalent to information denied. The lack of information due to communication gap would make a person to go wrong path when a follow up corporate update happen regarding a project or strategy, since the background of latest information being presented would not have reached this employee at the right time. Communication gap can easily result in inappropriate decisions resulting in loss for the company.

The Bridge the Communication Gap course enables people to get through to others more easily, obtain agreement with less effort, and get things moving quickly. Participants learn how to:

• Recognize other people's most preferred channels of communication.
• Translate their messages so they answer the key questions uppermost in other people's minds.
• Reduce resistance and increase acceptance by using communication strategies tailored to the needs of their audience.
• Create a non-defensive, open atmosphere in which information flows more freely, leading to more effective planning and decision making.
• Resolve differences in values, priorities, and interpretations of information for identifying mutually satisfying solutions
To accomplish these goals, participants learn how to:
• Recognize: Identify other people's preferred ways of communicating by what they do, say, write, and ask.
• Translate: Adjust their requests, proposals, and presentations to match other people's preferred ways of communicating.

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frustration
http://www.life-with-confidence.com/frustration.html
http://www.prosci.com/tutorial-resistance.htm
http://www.bcon-lifo.com/communication/comm_20.htm

Assignment 2

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

Planning

The process of setting goals, developing strategies, and outlining tasks and schedules to accomplish the goals.

Basic management function involving formulation of one or more detailed plans to achieve optimum balance of needs or demands with the available resources. The planning process (1) identifies the goals or objectives to be achieved, (2) formulates strategies to achieve them, (3) arranges or creates the means required, and (4) implements, directs, and monitors all steps in their proper sequence.

Why Plan?

The purpose of an explicit planning process is to develop clear business strategies in order to improve the odds that Your Company will have above average returns in the future.
Capitalism is spreading throughout the world; and throughout the world competitors are planning to eat each other. Those companies not prepared to meet the challenge will disappear. The days of the "we are guaranteed our share of the industry's profits" are gone. It's survival of the fittest - and not all companies will survive to see the year 2010.
To meet the challenges ahead, companies need to become more strategic and more flexible by providing business managers with a structured framework to think strategically in order to raise the level of business decision making and business performance.
In practice, business managers are almost always eager to plan effectively. It's when the planning process is illogical and chaotic that things go awry and managers look for cover.

Purpose of Plan

Just as no two organizations are alike, so also their plans. It is therefore important to prepare a plan keeping in view the necessities of the enterprise. A plan is an important aspect of business. It serves the following three critical functions:
• Helps management to clarify, focus, and research their business's or project's development and prospects.
• Provides a considered and logical framework within which a business can develop and pursue business strategies over the next three to five years.
• Offers a benchmark against which actual performance can be measured and reviewed.

Importance of the planning Process

A plan can play a vital role in helping to avoid mistakes or recognize hidden opportunities. Preparing a satisfactory plan of the organization is essential. The planning process enables management to understand more clearly what they want to achieve, and how and when they can do it.
A well-prepared business plan demonstrates that the managers know the business and that they have thought through its development in terms of products, management, finances, and most importantly, markets and competition.
Planning helps in forecasting the future, makes the future visible to some extent. It bridges between where we are and where we want to go. Planning is looking ahead.

Nature of Business Plan

Business Plan

A business plan is a document that summarizes the operational and financial objectives of a business and contains the detailed plans and budgets showing how the objectives are to be realized.
Because the business plan contains detailed financial projections, forecasts about your business's performance, and a marketing plan, it's an incredibly useful tool for business planning.
A business plan is also a road map that provides directions so a business can plan its future and helps it avoid bumps in the road. The time you spend making your business plan thorough and accurate, and keeping it up-to-date, is an investment that pays big dividends in the long term.

A business plan is also a road map that provides directions so a business can plan its future and helps it avoid bumps in the road. The time you spend making your business plan thorough and accurate, and keeping it up-to-date, is an investment that pays big dividends in the long term.

Why is a Business Plan needed?

You may be asking yourself, why do I need a business plan?
You need a business plan because it provides specific and organized information about your company. It shows all of your business associates (bankers, lenders, partners etc.) what the business ideas are exactly, how you will repay borrowed money, and helps you plan in detail all of the steps you will take now and in the future. A business plan is a crucial part of any loan application. Additionally, it informs sales personnel, suppliers, and others about your operations and goals. Click on the link below and find out from other sources why you need a business plan.
To be sure, a business plan is important. A sound business plan serves multiple purposes:
• Business Plan as Reality Check. The process of putting a business plan together, including the thought you put in before you begin to write it, forces you to take an objective, critical, unemotional look at your business project in its entirety.
• Business Plan as Performance Tool. Your written business plan is an operating tool which, when properly used, will help you manage your business and work effectively towards its Success. Your business plan will allow you to set realistic goals and objectives for your company's performance, and, if maintained, will also provide a basis for evaluating and controlling the company's performance in the future.
• Business Plan as Message Sender. The completed business plan communicates your company's ideas and message to employees, outside directors, lenders, and potential investors. outside your company. A business plan helps you do that in an organized, credible manner. Also, the process of planning helps you determine if your vision is realistic, and tells you what you need to do in order to achieve it.
• Business Plan as Motivation Tool. The development of your business plan is one of the best ways for you to communicate how well you understand your business and describe your vision of your business. Without proper planning, it becomes impossible for you to get all of your employees reading off the same page of the book and generating energy through high levels of team work. It is impossible to motivate people when they do not know where they are going or what they are trying to achieve.
• Business Plan as Management Development Tool. Putting together your business plan will help you develop as a manager because it can give you practice in thinking and figuring out problems about competitive conditions, promotional opportunities, and situations that are or may be beneficial or harmful to your business.
• Business Plan as Road Map. Your business plan, once it is completed, will give you and your employees goals and direction: a roadmap to follow in guiding your business through good and bad times.

Reasons You Need a Business Plan

Deal with displacement. Displacement is probably by far the most important practical business concept you've never heard of. It goes like this: "Whatever you do is something else you don't do." Displacement lives at the heart of all small-business strategy. At least most people have never heard of it.

Hire new people. This is another new obligation (a fixed cost) that increases your risk. How will new people help your business grow and prosper? What exactly are they supposed to be doing? The rationale for hiring should be in your business plan.

Share and explain business objectives with your management team, employees and new hires. Make selected portions of your business plan part of your new employee training.

Develop new business alliances. Use your plan to set targets for new alliances, and selected portions of your plan to communicate with those alliances.

Deal with professionals. Share selected highlights or your plans with your attorneys and accountants, and, if this is relevant to you, consultants.

Create a new business. Use a plan to establish the right steps to starting a new business, including what you need to do, what resources will be required, and what you expect to happen.

Seek investment for a business, whether it's a startup or not. Investors need to see a business plan before they decide whether or not to invest. They'll expect the plan to cover all the main points.

Nature of Information System Plan

Information System Plan

Information System Planning (ISP) is a structured approach developed by IBM to assist organizations in establishing a plan to satisfy their short and long term information requirements. The ISP methodology was implemented at Tel-Aviv University. A comprehensive plan for the development of a Management Information System (MIS) was derived. This paper presents a review of the process by which the plan was obtained, a discussion of the methodology, and its ramifications.
information system is frequently used to refer to the interaction between people, processes, data and technology. In this sense, the term is used to refer not only to the information and communication technology (ICT) an organization uses, but also to the way in which people interact with this technology in support of business processes .
Some make a clear distinction between information systems, ICT and business processes. Information systems are distinct from information technology in that an information system is typically seen as having an ICT component. Information systems are also different from business processes. Information systems help to control the performance of business processes .
Alter argues for an information system as a special type of work system. A work system is a system in which humans and/or machines perform work using resources (including ICT) to produce specific products and/or services for customers. An information system is a work system whose activities are devoted to processing (capturing, transmitting, storing, retrieving, manipulating and displaying)information .
Part of the difficulty in defining the term information system is due to vagueness in the definition of related terms such as system and information. Beynon-Davies argues for a clearer terminology based in systemics and semiotics. He defines an information system as an example of a system concerned with the manipulation of signs. An information system is a type of socio-technical system. An information system is a mediating construct between actions and technology .
As such, information systems inter-relate with data systems on the one hand and activity systems on the other. An information system is a form of communication system in which data represent and are processed as a form of social memory. An information system can also be considered a semi-formal language which supports human decision making and action.

Characteristics of a Quality ISP

A quality ISP must exhibit five distinct characteristics before it is useful. These five are presented in the table that follows.

Timely
The ISP must be timely. An ISP that is created long after it is needed is useless. In almost all cases, it makes no sense to take longer to plan work than to perform the work planned.

Useable
The ISP must be useable. It must be so for all the projects as well as for each project. The ISP should exist in sections that once adopted can be parceled out to project managers and immediately started.

Maintainable
The ISP must be maintainable. New business opportunities, new computers, business mergers, etc. all affect the ISP. The ISP must support quick changes to the estimates, technologies employed, and possibly even to the fundamental project sequences. Once these changes are accomplished, the new ISP should be just a few computer program executions away.

Quality
While the ISP must be a quality product, no ISP is ever perfect on the first try. As the ISP 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 ISP computation. In short, the ISP is a living document. It should be updated with every technology event, and certainly no less often than quarterly.

Reproducible

The ISP must be reproducible. That is, when its development activities are performed by any other staff, the ISP produced should essentially be the same. The ISP should not significantly vary by staff assigned.

ISP Summary
In summary, any technique employed to achieve an ISP must be accomplishable with less than 3% of the IT budget. Additionally, it must be timely, useable, maintainable, able to be iterated into a quality product, and reproducible. IT organizations, once they have completed their initial set of databases and business information systems will find themselves transformed from a project to a release environment.
The continuous flow environment then becomes the only viable alternative for moving the enterprise forward. It is precisely because of the release environment that enterprise-wide information systems plans that can be created, evolved, and maintained are essential.

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planning
http://bizinfonetwork.org/content.php?id=269&siteName=Starting%20a%20Business
http://www.gaebler.com/Why-Are-Business-Plans-Important.htm
http://www.tdan.com/view-articles/5262