Assignment 2 (Due: before November 29, 2009, 13:00hrs)

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1.What should be the nature of the relationship between the business plan and the IS plan? (at least 2000 words)

Subject: assignment 2 Wed Nov 25, 2009 11:18 pm

What should be the nature of the relationship between the business plan and the IS plan? (at least 2000 words)

Before I have to discuss the nature of the relationship between the business plan and the Information System plan, I prefer to make a distinction between the two. This will help me to understand the subject matter.

Business Plan

Why does a company or a business need to have a business plan?

A business plan is just like a blue print of a business. It just like a building a house, you would not walked over an empty lot and just start nailing boards. Therefore, it is foolish of you to start a business without having a business plan. This serve as a “road map” of a company.

In reality, having a business plan for any businesses will change over time as the business develops, and any particular business may have multiple business plans as its objectives change.

A business plan is the cornerstone of starting a business as well as a significant tool for monitoring the progress and growth of a company. With this, having a business plan is essential to the company or business with this following reason:

To test the feasibility of your business idea. Writing a business plan is the best way to test whether or not an idea for starting a business is feasible, other than going out and doing it. The business plan is a business safety net. Writing a business plan can save a great deal of time and money, if working through the business plan reveals that your business idea is unsustainable. With this you can test if having your idea business is feasible, and if not this help freeing you to move on to a new and better idea.
To give your new business the best possible chance of success. It is vital to the success of the business. Writing a business plan will ensure that you pay attention to both the broad operational and financial objectives of your new business and the details, such as budgeting and market planning. Taking the time to work through the process of writing a business plan will make for a smoother startup period and fewer unforeseen problems as your business becomes established.

To secure funding. To start a business, it needs to have both operating and start up capital. Some business has their capital from financial institutions such as banks in which they expect that business has a developed business plan. And established businesses usually need money for their business operations. With this, the role of having a business plan will at least gives you an assurance and chance to keep the business operating or maybe an expansion.
To make business planning manageable and effective. A business plan is essential if you're thinking of starting a business, but it's also an important tool for established businesses. The company's original business plan needs to be revised as new goals are set, to adopt the changes in business industry. Reviewing the business plan can also help a company or corporation see what goals have been accomplished, what changes need to be made, or what new directions to a company's growth should take.
To attract investors. Having a solid business plan, this is a plus factor to the company in which investors pull towards the company to invest. A company business plan will be the basis of the investor to do some background checks to the company.

Conclusion
Writing a business plan is time-consuming, but to have a successful business it is vital and essential to survive the start up phase of the business. The process of writing a business plan can do wonders to clarify where you've been and where you're going, thus this will serve as a company guide to the success.

Information System Plan

Today, most organizations in all sectors of industry, commerce and government are fundamentally dependent on their information systems. Thus, organizations or companies are increasingly looking toward the application of technology not only to strengthen existing business operations but also to create new opportunities that provide them with a source of competitive advantage.

Planning for information systems, as for any other system, begins with the identification of needs. In order to be effective, development of any type of computer-based system should be a response to need--whether at the transaction processing level or at the more complex information and support systems levels. Such planning for information systems is much like strategic planning in management.

Relationship between the Business Plan and the Information System Plan

Before, the relationship between the business strategy or plan and the information function was not made interest and awareness of the Top Management of the companies or firms. At that time, information systems were thought to be synonymous with the company data processing and were treated as some back-room operation in support of day-to-day ordinary tasks.
In the 80’s and 90’s, however, there has been a growing realization of the need to make information systems of strategic importance to an organization. As a result, strategic information systems planning (SISP) is a important issue. In many industry surveys, improved SISP is often mentioned as the most serious challenge facing by the Information System managers.

With this, strategic information system planning is the analysis of a corporation’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 the strategic direction of the company. Also, an article has emphasized the need to note that SISP is a management function and not a technical one. This is consistent with the earlier distinction between the older data processing (this was first era of three-era model information system application of John Ward) views and the modern strategic importance view of Information Systems. SISP thus is used to identify the best targets for purchasing and installing new management information systems and help an organization maximize the return on its information technology investment. A portfolio of computer-based applications is identified that will assist an organization in executing its business plans and realize its business goals. There is a growing realization that the application of information technology (IT) to a firm’s strategic activities has been one of the most common and effective ways to improve business performance.

The task of strategic information systems planning is difficult and often time organizations do not know how to do it. Strategic information systems planning is a major change for organizations, from planning for information systems based on users’ demands to those based on business strategy and plan.

Reference:
http://www.tn.gov/finance/oir/planning/ispprocess.pdf
http://viu.eng.rpi.edu/publications/strpaper.pdf

What should be the nature of relationship between business planning and Information System planning?

It is quite difficult to answer the question because when searched in the internet using the keywords, the exact answers are hard to find. However, I found a related study which I hope can answer the problem.

The said research is entitled Differences in Stage of Integration between Business Planning and Information System Planning according to value configurations by Petter Gottschalk and Hans Solli-Sæther of Norwegian School of Management BI, Sandvika, Norway. It is concerned with how stages of integration between strategic business and IS planning are related to different value configurations and eras of IS growth. The aim of the study is to investigate how and Information System planning is integrated with business planning.

Integration between Information System planning and business planning is considered to play a significant impact on the extent of information systems involvement to organizational performance. It is an important enabler of business-IS alignment. The content analysis of IS plans is conducted to identify stages of integration. The companies were also classified according to value configurations and eras of IS growth.

The word planning is used in the literature in many and various meanings: as future thinking, as controlling the future, as decision making, as integrated decision making, and as a formalized procedure to produce an articulated result, in the form of an integrated system of decisions (Mintzberg 1994). In this paper, a planning approach is defined as strategic decision making through a rational process that allows managers to formulate and document strategies. The aim of this study was not to do process research, but rather to investigate how IS planning (ISP) is integrated with business planning (BP).

Business planning is usually conducted when starting a new organization or a new major venture, for example, new product, service or program. Essentially, a business plan is a combination of a marketing plan, strategic plan, operational/management plan and a financial plan. Far more important than the plan document, is the planning process itself.

Business planning usually includes a thorough examination of the idea for a new product/service, if there's really a market for it, who the competitors are, how the idea is uniquely positioned to be competitive and noticeable, how the idea will be produced to a product/service, how much it will cost, how it will be promoted, what overall goals must be accomplished, how the development and ongoing operations will be managed and what resources are needed (including money). As noted above, a business plan is a combination of a marketing plan, financial plan, strategic plan and a operational/management plan. Here are a variety of perspectives. (McNamara, 1998-2007)

The information systems plan is the plan by which databases and information systems of the enterprise are accomplished in a timely manner. A key facility through which the ISP obtains its Adata@ is the meta data repository. The domain of the meta data repository is set forth in Figure 1, and, as seen through Figure 1, persons through their role within an organization perform functions in the accomplishment of enterprise missions, they have information needs. These information needs reflect the state of certain enterprise resources such as finance, people, and products that are known to the enterprises. The states are created through business information systems and databases.

The information systems plan project determines the sequence for implementing specific information systems. The goal of the strategy is to deliver the most valuable business information at the earliest time possible in the most cost-effective manner.
The end product of the information systems project is an information systems plan (ISP). Once deployed, the information systems department can implement the plan with confidence that they are doing the correct information systems project at the right time and in the right sequence. The focus of the ISP is not one information system but the entire suite of information systems for the enterprise. Once developed, each identified information system is seen in context with all other information systems within the enterprise.
IT projects are accomplished within distinct development environments. The two most common are: discrete project and release. The discrete project environment is typified by completely encapsulated projects accomplished through a water-fall methodology.
In release environments, there are a number of different projects underway by different organizations and staff of varying skill levels. Once a large number of projects are underway, the ability of the enterprise to know about and manage all the different projects degrades rapidly. That is because the project management environment has been transformed from discrete encapsulated projects into a continuous flow process of product or functionality improvements that are released on a set time schedule. Figure 3 illustrates the continuous flow process environment that supports releases. The continuous flow process environment is characterized by:
• Multiple, concurrent, but differently scheduled projects against the same enterprise resource
• Single projects that affect multiple enterprise resources
• Projects that develop completely new capabilities, or changes to existing capabilities within enterprise resources

Value configuration can be defined as an organization of activities, resources, and technologies, in order to create firm level competitive advantage. Our assumption is that there exist three basic value creation logics. Based on this assumption, this paper discusses differences in stages of integration between businesses and IS planning according to companies’ value configurations, and attempts to relate these differences to eras of IS growth.

Today many companies make large investments in information systems (IS) (Earl and Feeny 1994). Yet executives often question the business-IS alignment, namely whether these investments support their strategic objectives or whether opportunities to exploit IS for competitive advantage are being overlooked (Henderson and Venkatraman 1993).

There are both enablers and inhibitors of business-IS alignment (Luftman, Papp et al. 1999) and one area considered important for improved alignment is integration of strategic business and IS planning (Teo and Ang 1999).

Strategic alignment is said to be present when:

i) business strategies are enabled, supported, and stimulated by information strategies (Broadbent and Weill 1993);

ii) the goals and activities of the business are in harmony with the information systems that support them (Woolfe 1993);

iii) information systems support organizational goals and activities at every level (Lederer and Mendelow 1989); and

iv) choices within content and process dimensions of IS planning are mutually supportive and the two dimensions themselves are harmonized in a manner that is consistent with competitive strategy (Das, Zahra et al. 1991).

Integration between business planning and information systems planning is one important enabler of business-IS alignment (Teo and King 1997; Luftman, Papp et al. 1999; Teo and Ang 1999). Teo and King (1997) found a significant positive relationship between the level of business and IS planning integration and the extent of information systems contribution to organizational performance.

King and Teo (1997) have suggested a stages of integration model for the evolution of integration between strategic business and IS planning. The first stage is a separate planning with administrative integration characterized by the integration mechanisms such as a technically oriented and non-strategic role of the IS function. The second is a one-way linked planning with sequential integration characterized by integration mechanisms such as performance criteria of business strategy contribution. The third is a two-way linked planning with reciprocal integration such as frequent IS executive participation in business planning. The fourth is joint planning with full integration.

Nolan’s (1973) theory, perhaps the best-known and most widely cited model of IS evolution of in organizations, provides an insight into the way IS evolves in organizations and offers IS management the possibility of managing this complex phenomenon. The model describing the theory does not appear in the literature as a single model, but rather as a number of versions of the same model, which have evolved over time (Khandelwal and Ferguson 1999). For example, the model has been expanded in the form of three S-curves, each curve describing an era, with a discontinuity between the preceding and the following eras. The three eras are identified as data processing (DP) era, information technology (IT) era, and network (NW) era. These eras are themselves subdivided into three phases each as shown in Table 3. The curves represent both the growth of the IS and the organization’s learning experience as IS progresses through these eras. Each era is characterized by a period of evolution, followed by a period of stability, ending with a period of discontinuity before the start of the next era. The discontinuity is more a revolution rather than an evolutionary transition. For example, the transition from DP era to IT era is characterized by technological discontinuities in the form of personal computers, data communication networks, and robotics, while the transition from IT era to NW era is characterized by business discontinuities in the form of strategic alliances with customers and suppliers, access to external data, and outsourcing.

Typically, value chains transform input into output (products) using a long-linked technology. Scale and capacity utilization are key cost drivers. For each basic activity in the business value system the effort of IS is to improve products and production processes. Information systems are developed to support the activities in the value chain: accounting systems, production planning and control systems, marketing and sales systems. A typical example of administrative integration between BP and ISP was the plan for a food producer: IT can assist business processes in realizing and exploiting solutions for value creation. Value chains belong to the IT era as indicated by their technology use and stage of planning integration.

Value shops rely on an intensive technology to solve a customer or client problem. Selection, combination, and order of application of resources and activities vary according to the problem at hand. The development and use of IS, such as diagnostics, simulations, project management tools, and collaborative technologies, is first of all to support or assist the solution of unique problems. A typical example of administrative integration between BP and ISP was the plan S for a municipal health and social sector: Our goal is for all health personnel to use IT as help in medical and administrative
matters better than before. Value shops belong to the DP era as indicated by their technology use and stage of planning integration.

Value networks rely on a mediating technology to link clients or customers who are or wish to be interdependent. The mediating technology facilitates exchange relationships among customers distributed in time and space. Technology development is basically a support activity, but technology may as well be core business in this value configuration. The growing convergence of telecommunications, computing and production technology is of special relevance for value networks. Development and use of IS might be to obtain operational efficiency and cost minimization, as well as to create new integrated
services or products. A typical example of reciprocal/full integration between BP and ISP was the plan AG for a telecommunication company: Business puts heavy demands on IT, as IT contributes heavily to new business. Value networks belong to the IT network era as physical and electronic networks converge towards each other.

References:

Gottschalk, Petter and Hans Solli-Sæther. “Differences in Stage of Integration between Business Planning and Information System Planning according to value configurations.”

http://managementhelp.org/plan_dec/bus_plan/bus_plan.htm

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

MY BLOG:http://shielamariepnara.blogspot.com/2009/11/mis2-2-relationship-bet-business-plan.html

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

Business Plan

Before knowing the nature of the relationship between business plan and IS plan, let's first define the two for better understanding. According to wikipedia, business plan is 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. For my understanding, upon hearing business plan, it is planning about the business. Meaning, plan to which pertaining to attain certain goal for the company. 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 may also target changes in perception and branding by the customer, client, tax-payer, or larger community. A business plan having changes in perception and branding as its primary goals is called a marketing plan.

In the hyper-competitive environment of today, there is perhaps nothing more important than planning and specifically developing a business plan. In any organization, there are many different types of plans – financial, human resource, marketing, production and sales.These plans may be short-term or long-term, strategic or operational, and varying greatly in scope. In spite of the differences in scope and coverage, each plan has a common purpose: to provide guidance and structure on a continuing basis for managing the organization in a rapidly changing hypercompetitive environment.

In this era of planning and intense competition among nonprofits for funds and market share, increasing competition between for profits and nonprofits, and increasing opportunities and pressures for nonprofits to collaborate with other non-profits as well as with business corporations, a business plan becomes an integral part of strategically managing an organization. By describing all the relevant external and internal elements involved in managing the organization, the business plan integrates the functional plans such as finance, human resources, and marketing, providing a road map for the future of the organization. There are various types of nonprofit ventures that may require a business plan such as a commercial venture attempting to raise net revenues for the nonprofit as well as ventures that directly address the mission of the organization and may not generate profits from sales but still need adequate support.

A business plan is usually read by a variety of stakeholders, and often has many different purposes. It needs to be comprehensive enough to address the issues and concerns of advisors, bankers, funders, community members, foundations, corporations, individual donors, government program officers, and affected client groups. Generally, the purpose of a business plan is to: obtain financial resources; obtain other resources; develop strategic alliances; and/or provide direction and guidance for the organization. While a business plan can serve several purposes, its most frequent use is to obtain financial resources. A well developed business plan then is important as it: (1) provides guidance to the organization in decision making and organizing the direction of the company; (2) indicates the viability of an organization in the designated market; and (3) serves as a vehicle in obtaining financing.

Given the importance and purpose of a business plan, it is imperative that it be comprehensive and covers in depth all aspects of the organization. The plan will be read by a variety of individuals, each of who is looking for a certain level of detail. The business plan can be divided into three primary areas, each of which has several sections. The first primary area, while the shortest, is perhaps the most significant, particularly when the purpose is to secure financing. This area consists of the title page, table of contents, and executive summary. The title page should contain the following information: (1) the name, address, telephone, fax, and e-mail numbers of the organization; (2) the name and position of the principle individuals in the organization; (3) three to four sentences briefly describing the nature of the organization and the purpose of the business plan; and (4) a statement of confidentiality such as “this is confidential business plan number which cannot be reproduced without permission.” This statement is important, as each numbered business plan needs to be accounted for by recording the person and organization of the individual receiving it and the date of receipt. The table of contents is perhaps the easiest part of the business plan to develop. It should follow the standard format with major sections and appendixes (exhibits) indicated along with the appropriate page numbers. The final part of the first primary area of the business plan – the executive summary – is the most important and most difficult to develop. This no more than three page summary is frequently used to determine if the entire business plan is worth reading and analyzing. The executive summary then affects if more detailed attention will be given to the plan. Given its importance, the executive summary should be written last and be written and
rewritten until it highlights the organization in a concise, convincing manner covering the key points in the business plan. The executive summary should emphasize the three most critical areas for the success of the organization. In order of importance, these are the characteristics, capabilities, and experience of the management team; the nature and degree of innovativeness of the product or service and its market size and characteristics; and the expected results over the next three years. The second primary area of the business plan is the essence of the plan which contains the following sections: description of the organization, description of the area of service, marketing plan, financial plan, organization plan, operations plan, and summary. This area should be self contained, flowing smoothly from the description of the organization section to the summary section. The first section in this second primary area – the description of the organization – describes in detail the past, present, and future of the organization. The person reading the business plan needs to understand the history of the organization, its present size and scope, and its future over the next three years. The mission statement of the organization needs to be stated and show how this guides the organization. It is also important to clarify the tax status of the organization and especially if there is IRS approval for tax-exempt status. Following the organization section comes the description of the area of service. This section is important as it puts the organization in its proper context and competitive position. This section gives a historical overview of the service area, its present situation in terms of size and offerings, and its future outlook. A particularly important part of this section is competitive analysis, which should describe the strengths and weaknesses of each major competitor with respect to the corresponding strengths and weaknesses of the organization. This section should conclude with a forecast of the size and future outlook of the service area. The fourth section begins the three parts dealing with the important functional aspects of the organization. The first, the marketing plan describes the nature of the product or service and how it will be distributed, priced, and promoted to achieve the amount of activity indicated each year for the next three years. Since everyone realizes that marketing is involved in achieving the necessary sales, each marketing aspect should be discussed in detail in as comprehensive terms as possible. Given the close relationship, the financial plan follows logically. This section revolves around the preparation of four basic statements: the sources and uses of funds statement, the pro-forma income statements for at least the next three years, the pro-forma cash flow statements for at least the next three years, and the pro-forma balance sheets for at least the next three years. If the organization has already been in operation then past income statements and balance sheets should be in the appendix and discussed in the financial plan section The sixth section – the operational plan – describes overall how the organization will operate. This section should focus on the flow of work enabling the reader to understand the process that occurs from the time an order is received until the resource is delivered. This provides understanding of the overall operation of an organization. Primary area two concludes with a summary. This short section merely summarizes the preceding sections by highlighting the most important points and concludes with any requests of the reader. Following this core of the business plan comes primary area three – the appendices or exhibits. These provide supporting and additional information amplifying the material presented in primary area two. Typical appendices include: resumes of principals, markets statistics, market research data, competitors brochures and price lists, and leases and contracts.

Given the amount of time and effort needed to develop a good business plan, it is important that the plan be carefully implemented and used to provide guidance for the organization in all areas of its operation. The business plan will be most effective when controls are simultaneously implemented and the progress toward the established objectives is reviewed on a regular basis. Since the organization is operating in a competitive, changing environment, it is important that the organization be sensitive to changes in its field or industry, and market, and make the appropriate changes in the business plan as needed.
This will allow the business plan to be most effective in successfully guiding the organization over time.

ref: http://www.nationalcne.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/feature.display/feature_id/56/index.cfm?CFID=34311&CFTOKEN=48125333

IS Plan

IS plan for me is a plan in which it focuses on the improvements of the system in a certain organization. It is a process for developing a strategy and plans for aligning information systems with the business strategies of an organization. Most organization's survival now depends on IT. Planning of its effective use is a matter of organizational life and death. A variety of approaches, tools and mechanisms available for IS planning. In a traditional view, it is determining what decisions to make in the future. While in a better view, it is developing a view of the future that guides decision making today. Planning is different from making a strategy but I think it is also good over planning. Strategy making is stating the direction in which you want to go and how you intend to get there. Now, there are different types of planning. Strategic, tactical and operational. Strategic planning is an organization's process of defining its strategy, or direction, and making decisions on allocating its resources to pursue this strategy, including its capital and people. Various business analysis techniques can be used in strategic planning, including SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats ), PEST analysis (Political, Economic, Social, and Technological), STEER analysis (Socio-cultural, Technological, Economic, Ecological, and Regulatory factors), and EPISTEL (Environment, Political, Informatic, Social, Technological, Economic and Legal). Strategic planning is the formal consideration of an organization's future course. All strategic planning deals with at least one of three key questions:

1. "What do we do?"
2. "For whom do we do it?"
3. "How do we excel?"

In business strategic planning, the third question is better phrased "How can we beat or avoid competition?". In many organizations, this is viewed as a process for determining where an organization is going over the next year or more -typically 3 to 5 years, although some extend their vision to 20 years.
In order to determine where it is going, the organization needs to know exactly where it stands, then determine where it wants to go and how it will get there. The resulting document is called the "strategic plan." It is also true that strategic planning may be a tool for effectively plotting the direction of a company; however, strategic planning itself cannot foretell exactly how the market will evolve and what issues will surface in the coming days in order to plan your organizational strategy. Therefore, strategic innovation and tinkering with the 'strategic plan' have to be a cornerstone strategy for an organization to survive the turbulent business climate.

ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_planning

Tactical Planning is the process of taking the strategic plan and breaking it down into specific, short term actions and plans. The relative length of the planning horizon will vary from one market to another but typically the strategic plan will cover a period greater than three years while the tactical plan covers the period from today through to the end of year three. The content of any business plan will depend on why the plan is being produced. Some plans are for internal use only and act as a common reference during the preparation of budgets and appraisals. Some plans are basically sales documents aimed at persuading banks to provide loans and investors to provide equity. The process of producing a useable tactical plan is not easy as some flexibility is required to allow response to unplanned events. There are a large variety of strategic planning models and organisations that provide strategic planning consulting. Some of these are useful and can be used a check lists to ensure completeness and as facilitators to ask the awkward questions that people would prefer to leave unanswered. It is important that the tactical plan should be checked to ensure it is aligned with the strategic plan and that all activities are aimed at moving closer to the goals defined in the strategic plan. It is very easy for the tactical plan to diverge at a tangent because of someone's interests or disagreement with the strategic plan.

ref:http://www.businesscoachingexecutive.com/tactical_planning.html

An operational planning is a subset of strategic work plan. It describes short-term ways of achieving milestones and explains how, or what portion of, a strategic plan will be put into operation during a given operational period, in the case of commercial application, a fiscal year or another given budgetary term. An operational plan is the basis for, and justification of an annual operating budget request. Therefore, a five-year strategic plan would need five operational plans funded by five operating budgets. Operational plans should establish the activities and budgets for each part of the organisation for the next 1 – 3 years. They link the strategic plan with the activities the organization will deliver and the resources required to deliver them. An operational plan draws directly from agency and program strategic plans to describe agency and program missions and goals, program objectives, and program activities. Like a strategic plan, an operational plan addresses four questions:

* Where are we now?
* Where do we want to be?
* How do we get there?
* How do we measure our progress?

The OP is both the first and the last step in preparing an operating budget request. As the first step, the OP provides a plan for resource allocation; as the last step, the OP may be modified to reflect policy decisions or financial changes made during the budget development process. Operational plans should be prepared by the people who will be involved in implementation. There is often a need for significant cross-departmental dialogue as plans created by one part of the organisation inevitably have implications for other parts.

Operational plans should contain:

* clear objectives
* activities to be delivered
* quality standards
* desired outcomes
* staffing and resource requirements
* implementation timetables
* a process for monitoring progress.

ref:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operational_planning

In all the things we do, planning is a part of an activities for it guides every steps that can give satisfaction to our work. And we can't deny the fact that planning is so difficult. Here comes now the relationship between business plan and IS plan. It's because business goals and systems plans need to align.Strategic systems plans need to align with business goals and support those objectives. It will be difficult if CIO is not part of senior management. Technologies are rapidly changing. And continuous planning based on monitoring and experimenting new technologies. Certain companies need portfolios rather than projects. It is for the evaluation on more than their individual merit. On h.ow they fit into other projects and how they balance the portfolio of projects. In planning, infrastructure is included in which the infrastructure development is difficult to fund. It is often done under the auspices of a large application project. One of the challenge for this is to develop improved applications and improve infrastructure over time. Systems planning has become business planning, not just a technology issue.Responsibility needs to be joint. It is better done by a full partnership of C-level officers. Other planning issue is planning culture in which the systems planning must fit.

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A company's business plan is one of its most important documents. It can be used by managers and executives for internal planning. It can be used as the basis for loan applications from banks and other lenders. It can be used to persuade investors that a company is a good investment. For start-up ventures, the process of preparing a business plan serves as a road map to the future by making entrepreneurs and business owners think through their strategies, evaluate their basic business concepts, recognize their business's limitations, and avoid a variety of mistakes.

Business Plan is the primary source of information for potential purchasers of a company or one of its divisions or product lines. As with outside lenders and investors, business plans prepared for potential buyers provide them with verifiable facts and projections about the company's performance. The business plan must communicate the basic business premise or concept of the company, present its strengths as well as weaknesses, and provide indications of the company's long-term viability. When a company is attempting to sell off a division or product line, the business plan defines the new business entity.

Virtually every business needs a business plan. Lack of proper planning is one of the most often cited reasons for business failures. Business plans help companies identify their goals and objectives and provide them with tactics and strategies to reach those goals. They are not historical documents; rather, they embody a set of management decisions about necessary steps for the business to reach its objectives and perform in accordance with its capabilities.

Preparing the Business Plan

The process of preparing and developing a business plan is an interactive one that involves every functional area of a company. Successful business plans are usually the result of team effort, in which all employees provide input based on their special areas of expertise and technical skill. Business owners and managers provide overall support for the planning process as well as general guidelines and feedback on the plan as it is being developed.

Once the planning process has been fully organized, participants can begin the process of assessment. Internal evaluations include identification of strengths and weaknesses of all areas of the business. In addition, it is generally useful to assess and evaluate such external factors as the general economy, competition, relevant technologies, trends, and other circumstances outside the control of the company that can affect its performance or fundamental health.

Setting goals and defining strategies are the next key steps in the planning process. Using the assessment and evaluation of internal and external factors, fundamental goals for the business are developed. Pertinent areas to be studied include the company's competitive philosophy, its market focus, and its customer service philosophy. Specific performance and operational strategies are then established, based on these goals.

After strategies and goals have been defined, they are translated into specific plans and programs. These plans and programs determine how a company's resources will be managed in order to implement its strategies and achieve its goals. Specific areas that require their own plans and programs include the overall organization of the company, sales and marketing, products and production, and finance. Finally, these specific plans are assembled into the completed business plan.

Elements of a Business Plan

Business plans must include authoritative, factual data, usually obtained from a wide range of sources. The plans must be written in a consistent and realistic manner. Contradictions or inconsistencies within a business plan create doubts in the minds of its readers. Problems and risks associated with the business should be described rather than avoided, then used as the basis for presenting thoughtful solutions and contingency plans. Business plans can be tailored to the needs and interests of specific audiences by emphasizing or presenting differently certain categories of information in different versions of the plan.

Business plans contain a number of specific elements as well as certain general characteristics. These include a general description of the company and its products or services, an executive summary, management and organizational charts, sales and marketing plans, financial plans, and production plans. They describe the general direction of a company in terms of its underlying philosophy, goals, and objectives. Business plans explain specific steps and actions that will be taken as well as their rationale. That is, they not only tell how a company will achieve its strategic objectives, they also tell why specific decisions have been made. Anticipated problems and the company's response to them are usually included. In effect, business plans are a set of management decisions about how the company will proceed along a specified course of action, with justifications for those decisions. Listed below are brief descriptions of the major elements found in business plans.

Include the same information on the title page. If you have a logo, you can use it, too. A table of contents follows the executive summary or statement of purpose, so that readers can quickly find the information or financial data they need.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY. This is usually a two-to five-page summary of the entire business plan. It is an important part of the plan, in that it is designed to capture the reader's attention and create an interest in the company. It usually includes the company's mission statement and summarizes its competitive advantages, sales and profit projections, financial requirements, plans to repay lenders or investors, and the amount of financing requested.

DESCRIPTION OF BUSINESS. The business description includes not only a profile of the company, but also a picture of the industry in which the company operates. Every business operates within a specific context that affects its growth potential. The description of a company's operating environment may cover new products and developments in the industry, trends and outlook for the industry, and overall economic trends.

The intent of the company profile, meanwhile, is to provide readers with a description of unique features that give the company an edge in the environment in which it competes. A brief company history reveals how specific products and services were developed, while descriptions of pertinent contracts and agreements should also be mentioned (information on contracts and legal agreements may also be included in an appendix to the business plan). Other topics covered include operational procedures and research and development.

DESCRIPTION OF PRODUCTS AND/OR SERVICES. The goal of this section is to differentiate a company's products or services from those of the competition. It describes specific customer needs that are uniquely met by the firm's products or services. Product features are translated into customer benefits. Product life cycles and their effects on sales and marketing can be described. The company's plans for a new generation of products or services may also be included in this section.

DESCRIPTION OF MANAGEMENT AND ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE. The quality of a company's management team can be the most important aspect of a business plan. This section presents the strengths of the company's management team by highlighting relevant experience, achievements, and past performance. Key areas include management's ability to provide planning, organizational skills, and leadership. This section also contains information about the company's ownership and work force. It may present an existing or planned organizational structure that will accomplish the goals set forth in the business plan. Specific management and control systems are often described as well.

MARKET ANALYSIS. A thorough market analysis serves as the basis for a company's sales and marketing plans. The analysis generally covers the company's competition, customers, products, and market acceptance. The competitive analysis details the competition's strengths and weaknesses, providing a basis for discovering market opportunities. A customer analysis provides a picture of who buys and uses the company's products or services. This section of the business plan highlights how the company's products or services satisfy previously unfulfilled market needs. It also includes evidence of market acceptance of the company's unique products or services.

SALES AND MARKETING PLAN. The marketing plan delineates the methods and activities that will be employed to reach the company's revenue goals. This section describes the company's customer base, products or services, and marketing and sales programs. The latter is supported by conclusions drawn from the market analysis. Different revenue outcomes may be presented to allow for contingency planning in the areas of finance and production.

PRODUCTION PLAN. A production plan is usually included if the business is involved in manufacturing a product. Based on the sales and marketing plan, the production plan covers production options that are available to produce a desired mix of products. The production plan contains information that allows for budgeting for such costs as labor and materials. In non-manufacturing companies, this section would cover new service development.

FINANCIAL PLAN. This section covers the financing and cash flow requirements implicit in other areas of the business plan. It contains projections of income, expenses, and cash flow, as well as descriptions of budgeting and financial controls. Financial projections must be supported by verifiable facts, such as sales figures or market research. Monthly figures are generally given for the first two years, followed by annual figures for the next three to eight years. If the business plan is written for investors or lenders, the amount of financing required may be included here or in a separate section.

IMPLEMENTATION SCHEDULE. This section provides key dates pertaining to finance, marketing, and production. It indicates when specific financing is needed, when specific aspects of a particular marketing campaign will take place, and delivery dates based on production schedules.

CONTINGENCYPLANS. This section defines problems and challenges that the company may face and outlines contingency plans for overcoming obstacles that might arise. Specific topics that may be explored are competitive responses, areas of weakness or vulnerability, legal constraints, staffing, and continuity of leadership.

OTHER DETAILS. Most business plans include a table of contents and a cover sheet containing basic information about the company. An appendix may include a variety of documentation that supports different sections of the business plan. Among the items that may be found in an appendix are footnotes from the main plan, biographies, graphs and charts, copies of contracts and agreements, and references.

On the other hand, Information Systems Plan described the sequence for implementing specific information systems. The goal of the strategy is to deliver the most valuable business information at the earliest time possible in the most cost-effective manner.

According to Whitemarsh ISP, The end product of the information systems project is an information systems plan (ISP). Once deployed, the information systems department can implement the plan with confidence that they are doing the correct information systems project at the right time and in the right sequence. The focus of the ISP is not one information system but the entire suite of information systems for the enterprise. Once developed, each identified information system is seen in context with all other information systems within the enterprise.

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.

a.) 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.

b.) 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.

c.) Maintainable -The ISP should 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.

d.) 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.

e.) 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.

Therefore, Business Plans and IS Plan written primarily for use within the company generally stress the benefits that will result from implementation of the plan. These may include improved and more consistent performance, improved coordination and consistency among various segments of the company, greater ability to measure performance, empowerment of the work force, and a better motivated and educated work force. The plan provides a comprehensive framework and direction for ongoing operations.

It is also use to identify the company's strengths and weaknesses, potential problems, and emerging issues. They set forth performance standards on which expectations will be based, and clearly define goals and objectives to allow for coordination and better communication between all company areas.

References:
http://www.business-plan-success.com/Articles/BusinessPlanDefinition/
http://www.answers.com/topic/business-plan
http://www.entrepreneur.com/encyclopedia/term/82322.html

my BloG:http://jevaldez.blogspot.com/2009/11/ass-2-in-mis-2.html

Subject: business plan and IS plan: its relationship Mon Nov 30, 2009 7:06 pm

Planning is something very essential to anybody or any organization as it is a preparation of some things that need to be done. Encarta defines plan as a system for achieving objective. Thus, it is clearly stated that it is a method of doing something that is worked out in advance – a layout or just an outline of items to be included in certain tasks.

In any organization, planning is a basic tool in achieving its objectives and purposes. To earn success, people should have an effective business plan to be carried out. A business plan is any plan that works for a business to look ahead, allocate resources, focus on key points, and prepare for problems and opportunities(Bplans.com). Basically, any form of business and/or establishments has business plans that set out its future strategies and financial development.

Since we talk of business plan and IS plan here, let us dig deeper the importance of planning. To have a better view on this I would like to present to you some key points I have gathered through my researches about business planning.

First, planning is a critical component of good management and governance, as agreed by most non-profit leaders and experts. In organizing and controlling the affairs of a business, a manager has to set out a layout of his plans which will guide him in doing tasks concerning the achievement of his business goals. This will also help him govern his business colleagues and associates and direct the whole company to its program implementations. Without this solid foundation that serves as a backbone for the organization, no business will be able to have a clear perspective of its accomplishment. Planning guides the organization on the right track keeping it focused and remains relevant to the needs of its community, the reason why it exists. It provides a basis for measuring the results and progress of the business development. The key important thing is it makes the organization move into a systematic and orderly way.

Because planning serves as basis for assessment of progress, most organizations understand the need for annual program objectives. When managers and leaders organize objectives for yearly program implementations, they usually set out goals made strategically to help them set the priorities of the organization and organize work. They need work plans that are focused on organization’s programs which then include operating and systematic plans for the development of the company’s resources.

And with the fast-evolving changes in our environment in the present, plans should likewise be made every now and then if possible so to handle the rapid amendments and transformations of various company programs and objectives intended for longer terms. Some definite objectives could not be anymore applicable in a certain period of time or it may be difficult to implement now that several changes are influencing the present status of the organization. That is why planning is an important factor to be considered by most leaders since this will help them in making some methods which will aid in defining ways to manage changes brought by internal and external factors in the community.

Nevertheless, not only managers and leaders are liable in making plans in an organization. Since implementing the goals and objectives to achieve the vision and mission of the company involves each and every individual, all must also take part in setting the layout of the plans of the organization. In most cases, those of higher positions like CEOs and Board of Directors are the usual creators of planning the business components of the company and the lower rank staff like those in the supervising and control staff and employees are hands-on to the implementation of the plans. Some have certain office divisions and departments which handles these planning strategies. But in common cases, planning are done primarily by the administrative division.

Having realized the efficiency brought by technology to the corporate world, information technology has long been integrated into the core of every business through managing and supporting its operations. The information system department is not far from the organization’s most important areas. IS people are treated as critical resources of the company. Thus it is then very crucial for the company to take high attention on the heart of the organization which holds its vital information. We have talked and mentioned about the information system and its significance to the organization before. The purpose and use of information systems in the beginning, according to a reference that I have found, is targeted towards reducing manual labor and increasing efficiency and thus reducing cost of doing business. In this case, the information system processes the essential elements of the company’s day-to-day business.

For this reason, planning should include not only the external part of the business components of the company but also the internal structure of the organization as well as elements comprising the information systems. The information systems utilizes technology to better serve the organization, the community where it belongs, to perform its mission, to achieve its goals through propelling business, to boost the economy. There are a lot more reasons to keep driving the information systems of the company. Every organization as we all know is continually striving hard to improve its competitive position in the global and local marketplace. Thus most organizations invest in information technology as it plays a critical supporting role in reaching the organization’s goals.

If we are going to look down specifically on the components of an information system and have a breakdown of each task, we will see the importance that each significant element holds. All the hardware aspects of the organization are essential tools of every individual utilizing these resources necessary for running the business of an organization. Of course these equipments are investments of the company because these are the things that aid in processing large amounts of data and helps produce more results while lessening the effort of the labor. Naturally, hardware components would not run without the software elements of the system. Moreover, in most businesses, there are lots of proprietary and open source software alike being used by various companies that could further improve processing their information. Some of these are those especially made for certain tasks and programs made for working on particular jobs. Needless to say, an information system would not be without the most important ingredient – human resources. Of course, who would operate on the hardware and software components of the business without the people who are working for it? The workforce of the company is the critical resource of the organization. And as with the information system, these IT people are treated as highly significant beings because all the crucial information about the business of the company is being processed in the information system department which is manned by people who are hands-on to the functionalities of the system.

Moreover, since the information system involves many functions and procedures, it is therefore necessary to have an Information Systems Plan where the processing, classifying, arranging, and calculating the data input to yield the necessary output of the business information.

There are lots of cases where some departments especially the large divisions of the company have set unique strategies that certain objectives are made according from what their division or department are primarily tasked to work out. To be able to carry out the mission and vision of the company as a whole, each and every subdivisions of it should align with the business strategy. This is where the business plan and information systems plan connect.

The nature of relationship between the business plan and the information systems plan is relative to business and IT. An information system plan is a road map indicating direction of systems development. Normally, the information system is linked to the business plans of the organization. This is because aside from the business strategies being planned out by the heads of the company, there are also new hardware and software technologies that an organization should be aware of. The management should also look up to how these technologies will benefit the organization as a whole. Apart from that concerns such as how the company should acquire and manage the firm’s hardware and software assets, and other mediating factors affecting the information technology and the organization should also be considered.

An organization is a stable, formal structure. It takes resources from the environment and processes them into outputs. The information system is in charge of doing these procedures that is why the IS plan should not be far from the overall business plan of the company. Each will benefit the other. The organization takes information from the environment and the information system is in charge with the production process of these data which will be generated into outputs given back to the environment or the community needing the services of the organization. The information system department is just one formal organizational unit inside the organization which is responsible of the information systems. In developing a program that will be used in business transactions, for example, the programmers write the programs while system analysts translate business problems into solutions. The program that will be made will be used by end-users or representatives outside the IS department where systems are developed. This is one significant importance of the IS in the firm. Without intensive business plan and integrated IS plan, these programs would not be possibly directly implemented and gain beneficial results for the business. The kinds of information systems like the operational, knowledge, management, and strategic level serves the groups of operational managers, knowledge and data workers, middle managers, and senior managers. As we can see, these people are also the same persons setting out the company’s vision, mission, goals, and objectives. They make up the team in making the business plans of the organization. But here, in various functional areas like sales and marketing, manufacturing, finance, accounting, and human resources, all are also concerned with the information system levels. Just one proof that business plan should not isolate IS plan. In fact, the two should be well-made and integrated for the organization to grow and develop. If in some cases the organization plans to bring business to the global scope with its clients not only in the local or national but also worldwide, for sure it needs enough information and communication from and to various firms and business partners outside. This can be done by networking digital firms and virtual organizations to link people, assets, and ideas so to create and distribute products and services without being limited to physical locations.

The factors to consider when planning and/or maintaining an information system is nevertheless similar to planning and organizing the business. Both will be concerned of the organizational environment, its structure and operating procedures. Because the IS is considered as the heart of the organization, its plans should be aligned with the business plans of the firm. Likewise, the business plans should take more into account the needs and functionalities of the information system since it is the core of the company’s operations. The information system is designed to assist the kinds of tasks, decisions, and business processes. Thus, the impact of the IS will also affect the organization as a whole. Information system and business strategy is an effective partnership and to gain efficiency in business, these two should work well together through strategic planning.

In general, I can say that the use of information technology in business strategies helps achieve competitive advantage of the organization in the global marketplace. This is because IS encouraging the sharing of knowledge across business units enhances competency. Information systems achieve great efficiencies by automating parts of the business processes. When the manual system poses threats to security and reliability of data due to redundancy, the automated system can bring fast, accurate, more reliable outputs which could then be utilized not just by one functional area in the company but to all that is concerned with the information being processed. This is what we call cross-functional business processes which go beyond the boundary between sales, marketing, research and development, and many other. Just like in an order fulfillment process, the methods involved in sales include generating and submitting the order. It could be passed on to the accounting section where the credit is checked and approved to generate invoice. If the credit is approved, the manufacturing and production can now proceed in assembling and shipping the product. Without the information technology as a tool, most organizations would spend lots of costly efforts and resources if the said transaction will be done manually and/or in a decentralized system where in fact all can be done more efficiently and quickly if appropriate IS procedures will be followed. Within the business, there are a lot of functions having its uses of information systems. Just imagine if the information system plan is not in line with the business plan or vice versa. The shallow thought connecting these ideas is this: the information system comprises of the different systems in which every process of each business function is made. Needless to say, both IS and business strategies is correlated to each other – business plans carry out the external factors of the organization while IS plans have to do with the information system and the company’s core issues.

study

I would like to acknowledge the following resources I used as references of the above statement:

What is a Business Plan by Tim Berry in BPlans.com

The State of Tennessee 2008 Information Systems Statewide Plan by Bengel et. al

Administrative Information Systems Business Plan Exec. Summary by University of Iowa

Formulating an Information System Strategic Plan by BlastAsia Inc.

Commonwealth of Virginia Strategic Plan for Information Technology 2007-2011

Management Information Systems 8th edition by Laudon and Laudon materials:
Chapter 2 Information Systems in the Enterprise
Chapter 3 Information Systems, Organizations, Management, and Strategy
Chapter 12 Redesigning the organization with Information Systems

Idea

Any reactions? Your comments and suggestions are welcome in my blog:
a soul's reflections

http://charmainespeaksup.blogspot.com/2009/11/nature-of-relationship-between-business.html

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

Assignment 2 (Due: before November 29, 2009, 13:00hrs) Icon_arrow

For the passed time of our discussion we have discussed about plan , a strategic plans for our self for the future , we had learned also about why we should do these, how we could imply these plans.
Planning is important not only for us in our self but also for the company , businesses , firms etc for the future achievements of the organizations. They have business plans and some of these businesses has a Information system plan(IS plan) for the better service of the company .For us to know more about the nature of the these two (Business plan and IS plan ) lets discuss their destinction.

Assignment 2 (Due: before November 29, 2009, 13:00hrs) Icon_bounce

Business Plan
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.
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 may also target changes in perception and branding by the customer, client, tax-payer, or larger community. A business plan having changes in perception and branding as its primary goals is called a marketing plan

Business planning is a management-directed process of identifying long-term goals for a business or business segment, and formulating realistic strategies for reaching those goals. Through planning, management decides what objectives to pursue during a future period, and what actions to undertake to achieve those objectives. Plans may be broad and encompass the entire enterprise, like a plan to double corporate profits, or they may concentrate on certain functional domains, such as information technology planning. Business planning may also entail developing contingency plans of what to do if some goals prove unattainable along the way or of how the business would survive a crisis, e.g., data center failure, natural disaster, and so forth.
Successful business planning requires concentrated time and effort in a systematic approach to answer three basic questions:
1. Where is the business enterprise today?
2. Where does management want to be in the future?
3. How can the business accomplish this?
In answering the first question management assesses the present situation and its implications for future developments. Through planning, management concerns itself with the future implications of current decisions it is about to make, and considers how these decisions limit the scope of future actions. The second question anticipates future profitability and market conditions, and leads management to determine pragmatic objectives and goals. Finally, management outlines a course of action and analyzes the financial implications of those actions. Often management will specify measurable outcomes along the way that will demonstrate whether the business is progressing toward the goals as planned. From an array of alternatives, management distills a broad set of interrelated choices to form its long-term strategy. It is in the annual budgeting process that management develops detailed, short-term plans that guide the day-to-day activities meant to attain the objectives and goals.

PURPOSE AND FUNCTION OF PLANNING
Effective planning enables management to craft its own future, at least to some degree, rather than merely reacting to external events without a coherent motivating force for corporate actions. Management sets objectives and charts a course of action so as to be proactive rather than reactive to the dynamics of the business environment. The assumption, of course, is that through its continuous guidance management can enhance the future state of the business.

PLANNING CONCEPTS
Business planning is a systematic and formalized approach to accomplishing the planning, coordinating, and control responsibilities of management. It involves the development and application of: long-range objectives for the enterprise; specific goals to be attained; long-range profits plans stated in broad terms; adequate directions for formulating annual, detailed budgets, defining responsibility centers, and establishing control mechanisms; and evaluative methods and procedures for making changes when necessary.
Implicit in the process are the following concepts:
• The process must be realistic, flexible, and continuous.
• Management plays a critical role in the long-term success of a business.
• Management must have vision and good business judgment in order to plan for, manipulate, and control, in large measure, the relevant variables that affect business performance.
• The process must follow the basic scientific principles of investigation, analysis, and systematic decision making.
• Profit-planning and control principles and procedures are applied to all phases of the operations of the business.
• Planning is a total systems approach, integrating all the functional and operational aspects of the business.
• Wide participation of all levels of management is fundamental to effective planning.
• Planning has a unique relationship to accounting which collects, books, analyzes, and distributes data necessary for the process.
• Planning is a broad concept that includes the integration of numerous managerial approaches and techniques such as sales fore-casting, capital budgeting, cash flow analysis, inventory control, and time and motion studies.
A business plan, then, incorporates management objectives, effective communications, participative management, dynamic control, continuous feedback, responsibility account .

Assignment 2 (Due: before November 29, 2009, 13:00hrs) Icon_bounce

Information System plan

A information System plan is a a process for developing a strategy and plans for aligning information systems with the business strategies of an organization.

The systems planning function of the life cycle seeks to identify and prioritize those technologies and applications that will return the most value to the business. Synonyms include strategic systems planning and Information resource management.
Study the Business Mission with Information System
Although many businesses haven't formally documented their mission, they all have one. If information systems are to truly return value to the business, they need to directly address that mission. Thus, the first phase of systems planning is to study the business mission.
Ideally, the scope of the phase should be the entire business. For some companies, that is much too large. consequently, the scope might be reduced to a more manageable level-a division, a plant, or some other significant operating unit. For other companies, the scope of the phase is limited by the level of top management support received. Top executives of the organization must be willing to participate in the development of any strategic plan.
Planning analysts are specially trained information systems planning professionals. Their job is similar to that of systems analysts; however, they must be even more business-oriented that? the average systems analyst. Planning analysts must be familiar with the planning methodology to be used and the deliverables to be produced. They require a unique blend of skills and experiences, including business management, systems analysis and design, data management, and networking.
Many IS shops have difficulty finding the correct mix of these skills. Particularly, IS professionals tend to be either too applications-oriented, too database-oriented, or too network-oriented. In this case, the business usually hires management consultants to serve as the planning analysts. These consultants are widely available through IS consulting firms (e.g., Ernst & Young, James Martin & Associates, or IBM)
The input to this phase is the business mission, as "discovered" through interviews and group sessions with system owners. The business mission Is usually defined in terms of customers, products and services, material resources, human resources, geographic operating locations, management structures and philosophy, corporate goals and objectives, unavoidable business constraints, critical business success factors, and other management-oriented criteria.
The key deliverable is business plans. Hopefully, those plans already exist; this phase merely translates them into terms or formats that are useful to the system owners and planning analysts in subsequent planning phases. (All too often, that plan does not exist!)
Based on the findings of this phase, the planning effort could be canceled due to a lack of management commitment or funding. It Is more likely, however, that the project will continue to the next phase-possibly with a reduced business scope.

Assignment 2 (Due: before November 29, 2009, 13:00hrs) Icon_arrow

My analysis about the question “What should be the nature of the relationship between the business plan and the IS?” is that IS plan is an important thing in business planning now a days .And this starts with the evolvement of the businesses .For now many organizations prefer to have a Information system and in that this component would help them to make an business plan of their company.
IS exist to support the needs of the business area . Without this connection, information technology can be a solution in search of a problem and business goals may not take into account new IS capabilities. As planning processes mature over time, business planning and IS planning should align to meet the same goals. Any endeavor that seeks to improve the organization must take into account all the tools available and deliver an integrated solution. Even today, it is rare to find a business initiative that doesn’t contain an IS component that must be coordinated with organizational, human resource, and procedural components.
IT planning occurs in a framework of other types of planning . IS Strategic planning, IRM planning, business planning and tactical planning are all closely related. In addition to plans, there are enterprise and IS Architectures design documents used to optimize information systems and IS investments. They create a model to ensure the choice of technologies has the greatest long-term value and benefit to the organization. The following chart shows how each of these elements relates to the state organization hierarchy, business and IS domains, and to each other.
Real estate organizations are globally undergoing dramatic changes and shifts in their underlying operating models — a direct result of extensive M&A activity, expansion of product offerings, geographic expansion and an increasingly transparent and global economy. The trend of outsourcing key business processes to emerging service providers adds additional complexity, resulting in increasingly sophisticated IT demand

Reference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_plan
http://newton.uor.edu/Courses/SysAnaDes/planning.html
http://www.referenceforbusiness.com/encyclopedia/Bre-Cap/Business-Planning.htmll
file:///C:/Documents andSettings/Sunshine/Desktop/What_is_information_system_plan.htm

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Posts : 38 Points : 39 Join date : 2009-06-20 Age : 34

What should be the nature of the relationship between the business plan and the IS (information system) plan?

To be real honest, without the aid of our technology, I won't be able to know what a Business Plan and an IS plan is. Thanks to the Internet. But then in order to find the relationship of the two, knowing what PLAN (PLANNING) means would give a little help.

As Time-Management.com said, planning is one of the most important project management and time management techniques. Planning is preparing a sequence of action steps to achieve some specific goal. If you do it effectively, you can reduce much the necessary time and effort of achieving the goal.

A plan is like a map. When following a plan, you can always see how much you have progressed towards your project goal and how far you are from your destination. Knowing where you are is essential for making good decisions on where to go or what to do next.

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.

Now that I am able to give what planning is and its importance. I think what Business Plan is would be the next.

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.

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 may also target changes in perception and branding by the customer, client, tax-payer, or larger community. A business plan having changes in perception and branding as its primary goals is called a MARKETING PLAN.

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.

Business plans are decision-making tools. There is no fixed content for a business plan. Rather the content and format of the business plan is determined by the goals and audience. A business plan should contain whatever information is needed to decide whether or not to pursue a goal.

For example, a business plan for a non-profit might discuss the fit between the business plan and the organization’s mission. Banks are quite concerned about defaults, so a business plan for a bank loan will build a convincing case for the organization’s ability to repay the loan. Venture capitalists are primarily concerned about initial investment, feasibility, and exit valuation. A business plan for a project requiring equity financing will need to explain why current resources, upcoming growth opportunities, and sustainable competitive advantage will lead to a high exit valuation.

Preparing a business plan draws on a wide range of knowledge from many different business disciplines: finance, human resource management, intellectual property management, supply chain management, operations management, and marketing, among others. It can be helpful to view the business plan as a collection of sub-plans, one for each of the main business disciplines.

Meanwhile, Information Systems Planning, or Planning for information systems, as for any other system, “begins with the identification of needs. In order to be effective, development of any type of computer-based system should be a response to need--whether at the transaction processing level or at the more complex information and support systems levels. Such planning for information systems is much like strategic planning in management. Objectives, priorities, and authorization for information systems projects need to be formalized. The systems development plan should identify specific projects slated for the future, priorities for each project and for resources, general procedures, and constraints for each application area. The plan must be specific enough to enable understanding of each application and to know where it stands in the order of development. Also the plan should be flexible so that priorities can be adjusted if necessary. King (King, 1995) in his recent article has argued that a strategic capability architecture - a flexible and continuously improving infrastructure of organizational capabilities – is the primary basis for a company's sustainable competitive advantage. He has emphasized the need for continuously updating and improving the strategic capabilities architecture.” - Somendra Pant and Cheng Hsu.

From the definitions declared above, since that Information System Planning is a process for developing a strategy and plans for aligning information systems with the business strategies of an organization, and that business plan is formal statement of a set of business goals, the reasons why they are believed attainable, and the plan for reaching those goals. Both are essential to the development of an organization. It can make or break an organization. And as during our lectures, with proper business planning in lined with proper strategic IS plan, an organization may bloom. And as to what the both are naturally related with, well, both deals with proper Time Management and Planning for the betterment of an organization. Well, I hope I said it well and right. Razz

References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_plan
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_information_system_plan
http://www.time-management-guide.com/planning.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planning
http://viu.eng.rpi.edu/publications/strpaper.pdf

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

The nature of the relationship between the business plan and the IS plan is Information system is a process for developing a strategy and plans for aligning information systems with the business strategies of an organization. The origin of the Open Business Plan model is in the free software.

According to Wikipedia:
Traditionally business plans have been highly confidential and quite limited in audience. The business plan itself is generally regarded as secret. However the emergence of free software and open source has opened the model and made the notion of an open business plan possible. An Open Business Plan is a business plan with unlimited audience. The business plan is typically web published and made available to all.
In the free software and open source business model, trade secrets, copyright and patents can no longer be used as effective locking mechanisms to provide sustainable advantages to a particular business and therefore a secret business plan is less relevant in those models. While the origin of the Open Business Plan model is in the free software and services arena, the concept is likely applicable to other domains.
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.
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 may also target changes in perception and branding by the customer, client, tax-payer, or larger community. A business plan having changes in perception and branding as its primary goals is called a marketing plan.
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.Business plans are decision-making tools. There is no fixed content for a business plan. Rather the content and format of the business plan is determined by the goals and audience. A business plan should contain whatever information is needed to decide whether or not to pursue a goal.For example, a business plan for a non-profit might discuss the fit between the business plan and the organization’s mission. Banks are quite concerned about defaults, so a business plan for a bank loan will build a convincing case for the organization’s ability to repay the loan. Venture capitalists are primarily concerned about initial investment, feasibility, and exit valuation. A business plan for a project requiring equity financing will need to explain why current resources, upcoming growth opportunities, and sustainable competitive advantage will lead to a high exit valuation.Preparing a business plan draws on a wide range of knowledge from many different business disciplines: finance, human resource management, intellectual property management, supply chain management, operations management, and marketing, among others. It can be helpful to view the business plan as a collection of sub-plans, one for each of the main business disciplines.
"A good business plan can help to make a good business credible, understandable, and attractive to someone who is unfamiliar with the business. Writing a good business plan can’t guarantee success, but it can go a long way toward reducing the odds of failure."

According to tdan.com
The information systems plan is the plan by which databases and information systems of the enterprise are accomplished in a timely manner.
The information systems plan project determines the sequence for implementing specific information systems. The goal of the strategy is to deliver the most valuable business information at the earliest time possible in the most cost-effective manner.
The end product of the information systems project is an information systems plan (ISP). Once deployed, the information systems department can implement the plan with confidence that they are doing the correct information systems project at the right time and in the right sequence. The focus of the ISP is not one information system but the entire suite of information systems for the enterprise. Once developed, each identified information system is seen in context with all other information systems within the enterprise.
A quality ISP must exhibit five distinct characteristics before it is useful.
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.
Whenever a proposal for the development of an ISP is created it must be assessed against these five characteristics. If any fail or not addressed in an optimum way, the entire set of funds for the development of an ISP is risked.
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.

Resources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_plan
http://www.tdan.com/view-articles/5262

VISIT MY BLOG:
http://rosemienunez.blogspot.com/

The question: “What should be the nature of the relationship between the business plan and the IS plan?”

To clear all of our minds, let’s first take a look at the definition of a business plan and an Information System (IS) plan. But before that, I’m gonna express first what I think a business plan and an information system plan is.

For me, a business plan is a plan that states what the business or the company’s plans for the future are. This plan should also contain the results that they would want to see by implementing the said plan. And also what they must do in order to achieve their goal (traits, personality, motivations). An IS plan for me is a company’s plan on what to do with everything in connection with information technology and information systems so as to help their business become successful. From the software to be used, trainings for the employees on using that particular software, the hardware to be used, and everything else connected to IT, that should be the content of the IS Plan.

From what I have read from Encarta Dictionaries, a business plan is a plan of future strategy. It is a plan that sets out the future strategy and financial development of a business, usually covering a period of several years.

And also, from the VERY popular site, Wikipedia.com (which I think is the major source of definitions for this forum), 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.

And here are some additional information from About.com:
Business Planning encompasses all the goals, strategies and actions that you envision taking to ensure your business’s survival and growth. Business planning can be broken down into two large topics; profit-making business planning and contingency business planning

Profit-making business planning is all the general business planning that must be done to start and run a successful business. The best known example of this type of business planning is the business plan. The business plan isn’t a do-it-and-forget-it business planning exercise but a living document that needs to be updated throughout the lifecycle of your business. Once the business has officially started, profit-making business planning will center on setting and meeting goals and targets. While some businesses make business planning an annual event, business planning is most effective when it’s done frequently and consistently. The business planning process of reviewing progress on business goals and targets and setting new ones should take place at least monthly.
Daily business planning is an incredibly effective way for individuals to focus on achieving both their own goals and the goals of the organization.
Contingency business planning (also known as business continuity planning) is the type of business planning that focuses on dealing with crises. A business contingency plan is a proposed implementation plan to deal with some new emergency, event or new information.

For me, a business plan and an information systems plan must coincide with each other. Strategic Information Systems Planning (SISP) is a very essential factor for the growth and the betterment of a business. Why? Because information systems are now being used by companies in its different functions and departments. Information systems now help with data processing, networking, management issues and many, many more.

From what I have read from the pdf file “Strategic Information Systems Planning: A Review” by Somendra Pant and Cheng Hsu, these are the eras of information systems and their relationships. These data shown here are shown as follows: year - era -characteristics.

• 60s – Data Processing – Standalone computers, remote users, cost reduction function

• 70s & 80s – Management Information Systems (MIS) – Distributed process, interconnected, regulated by management service, supporting the business, user driven

• 80s & 90s – Strategic Information Systems (SIS) – Networked integrated systems, available and supportive to users, relate to business strategy, enable the business – business driven

We can see here that at first, information systems were not that important to a business. Computers were just used for basic data processing. They were just used for back-room operations and that was that. But later, their significance was slowly recognized. Companies later slowly made use of their information systems to help their business in its tasks and, naturally, to help their business prosper and become a success. Furthermore, planning for a company’s information systems plan was started. A plan for a company’s success was now related with its information system. Nowadays, an information systems plan of a company should be included with their business plan. That relationship should stay with the company.

For their plan to succeed, they should assess their needs. If these needs are clearly stated and declared, then they will know what to do with their information system. They should know now what their objectives and priorities would be. Also, they should be able to plan what they would need for their IS and its planned projects for the future. And if they are planning for the future, then what they plan should be flexible, so if there would be changes that will happen in the future, their projects and all they planned for could adjust without any problems.

There are also problems to be faced. One is the “veterans” problem. People from the management, particularly the old ones I suspect, would be doubtful about the information system plan. I can’t blame them because they have long been operating manually, either in accounting, human resource, etc. Just like in the May 2010 Elections where the government plans to automate and there are so many doubts, automated systems are not really that very convincing to other/older people. Other problems for the plan would be if there would be not enough resources for what you want to attain. Maybe the budget is not enough or something like that. But I’m sure that the company could think of ways to adjust their budget to meet their goals and objectives.

Basically, I think that the business plan is the master plan, and the IS plan would be under the master plan. The thought would be that the IS plan is just one of the plans of the company that need to be accomplished. There would be other plans other than the IS plan. And if all of these plans are finished, then the business plan would be a success. The information system plan would be one of the components of the business plan (I think).

The nature of the relationship of the business plan and the IS plan? I think their relationship should be that they are always connected with each other (if that company with the business has an information system, that is). If you have planned for your information system with the mindset of helping your company/business grow and be successful, then that would be very helpful for the business plan. That’s because, as stated earlier, the business plan is where you put your plans of reaching your goals, and the IS plan is one of those plans that aim to reach your goal. Having an information system in a company is a big help for that business, so it shouldn’t be ignored.

Subject: Assignment 2 Sun Dec 06, 2009 6:51 pm

Let’s define first what is business plan from IS plan. According to Tim Berry, he define business plan as a plan that works for a business to look ahead, allocate resources, focus on key points, and prepare for problems and opportunities. Unfortunately, many people think of business plans only for starting a new business or applying for business loans. But they are also vital for running a business, whether or not the business needs new loans or new investments. Businesses need plans to optimize growth and development according to priorities. That is why; business plan is needed to an organization. A business plan is simply a resume for your proposed business. Its prime significance is that your business plan becomes your calling card. Anytime you are going in to talk to a property manager about leasing space for your company, or you are meeting with a potential lender or depositor, your business plan will announce/outline who you are and what your purpose is. In most cases, a business plan is created to elucidate and exemplify the vision you have for your business, and to persuade others to help you achieve that vision. To achieve this, your plan will need to demonstrate on paper that you have a rigid visualization of what your business is going to be. It needs to induce others that your business notion can be thriving and that you possess the expertise-alone or collectively-to assure that it will be both thriving and lucrative. While it is obviously imperative to be able to present your business concept in a way that allows others to comprehend hastily and accurately what you anticipate to be doing, you also need to develop a business plan for your own use. The procedure of mounting your business plan will necessitate you to focus on exactly what you are trying to attain, precisely where you want to be going, and exactly how you plan to get there. It will vigor you to detail the many expenses involved to open your business, the projected sales and monthly expenses of actual operation, and the volume of business you will need to generate to meet your obligations.

Now, let’s define also what information system plan is. According to a website, information system plan is a process for developing a strategy and plans for aligning information systems with the business strategies of an organization. That is why, most businesses and organizations used planning such as information system planning for it helps their institution to be productive and well-organize. As I search all over to the flat world which is the internet, I found this information about the characteristics of having a quality information system planning. According to Whitemarsh which is an information system corporation, inorder to have a quality information system planning, it must have the five distinct characteristics. To wit:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. Maintainable - The ISP should 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.

Therefore, business plan and information system plan are both useful to an institution, either it is non-profitable or profitable organization for it helps to an organization to be organize and more productive but also to anticipate some events that may cause something wrong to your company in the future.

O well, here's my second post of this semester subject MIS.

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

Actually, these two terms are very broad in scope and has countless of definition. Many suggested definitions that suits company's business plans and IS plans. Business plans are different from IS plans.

Now, let's define business plans and IS plans. After defining them, let's find out their differences and how these differences help its other in building the relationship between them.

First, let's define Business plan. According to a site, myownbusiness.org, Business plan is about creating a written outline that evaluates all aspects of the economic viability of your business venture including a description and analysis of your business prospects. Moreover, a business plan will become the roadmap to chart the course of a business. But at the outset no one cannot predict all of changing conditions that will surface. So after opening for business, it is important that you periodically review and update you plan.

A business plan, is about how business be strong and how can the business stand firm against time. It is very important to have a very good foundation of business plan in your business because it will help businessmen monitor its progress.

Business plan is going to be useful in a number of ways:

1. First and foremost, it will define and focus the objective using appropriate information and analysis. This objective are those things you wanted to achieve specifically. Documentation of it is very important for the analysis of future plans.

2. Entrepreneur can use it as a selling tool in dealing with important relationships including your lenders, investors and banks.

3. Business plan can uncover omissions and/or weaknesses in your planning process. Through business plans, weaknesses can be discover and more chances of finding solutions to it. This weaknesses could be barriers to success. So as early as possible, be aware of these.

4.Entrepreneur can use the plan to solicit opinions and advice from people, including those in intended field of business, who will freely give you invaluable advice. Too often, entrepreneurs forge ahead (\"My Way!\") without the benefit of input from experts who could save them a great deal of wear and tear. \"My Way\" is a great song, but in practice can result in unnecessary hardships.

Second, after defining what business plan is, let's define IS plan and its benefit to business.

In a broad sense, the term Information Systems (IS) refers to the interaction between processes and technology. This interaction can occur within or across organizational boundaries. An information system is not only the technology an organization uses, but also the way in which the organizations interact with the technology and the way in which the technology works with the organization’s business processes.

For a long time relationship between information system functions and corporate strategy was not of much interest to Top Management of firms. Information Systems were thought to be synonymous with corporate data processing and treated as some back-room operation in support of day-to-day mundane tasks (Rockart, 1979).

Planning for information systems, as for any other system, begins with the identification of needs. In order to be effective, development of any type of computer-based system should be a response to need--whether at the transaction processing level or at the more complex information and support systems levels. Such planning for information systems is much like strategic planning in management.

REFERENCES:

http://www.myownbusiness.org/s2/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_systems_discipline

http://viu.eng.rpi.edu/publications/strpaper.pdf

Subject: Assignment 2 Mon Dec 07, 2009 1:37 am

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

Let us just first define the business plan and the Information System plan enable for us to understand it clearly.

Business Plan

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.

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 may also target changes in perception and branding by the customer, client, tax-payer, or larger community. A business plan having changes in perception and branding as its primary goals is called a marketing plan.

Business plans are decision-making tools. There is no fixed content for a business plan. Rather the content and format of the business plan is determined by the goals and audience. A business plan should contain whatever information is needed to decide whether or not to pursue a goal.

For example, a business plan for a non-profit might discuss the fit between the business plan and the organization’s mission. Banks are quite concerned about defaults, so a business plan for a bank loan will build a convincing case for the organization’s ability to repay the loan. Venture capitalists are primarily concerned about initial investment, feasibility, and exit valuation. A business plan for a project requiring equity financing will need to explain why current resources, upcoming growth opportunities, and sustainable competitive advantage will lead to a high exit valuation.

Preparing a business plan draws on a wide range of knowledge from many different business disciplines: finance, human resource management, intellectual property management, supply chain management, operations management, and marketing, among others. It can be helpful to view the business plan as a collection of sub-plans, one for each of the main business disciplines.

"... a good business plan can help to make a good business credible, understandable, and attractive to someone who is unfamiliar with the business. Writing a good business plan can’t guarantee success, but it can go a long way toward reducing the odds of failure."

resources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_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.

Information systems are the primary focus of study for the information systems discipline and for organizational informatics.

resources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_system

Conclusion:

My conclusion about the relationship of business plan to information system plan, as what stated above the business plan is a set of goals on how they will achieve those goals while the information system plan is developing strategy and plans for aligning information system with the business strategy of an organization. The business plan is a whole plan why that company was found what was the purpose the goal of the company, another is the plan or the strategic plan of the company on how to achieve their goal while the information system plan is a tool on which it can help to achieve the goal of the company in an effective way that the company can easily identify what to do or how they will make a move to reach their goals.

Before I’ll discuss my understanding or notion to the nature of the relationship between the business plan and the IS plan. Let me define Business, Business Plan, Information System and the Information System Plan.

Business. It is an organization which primary objective is to provide goods and services needed by the people.

Business Plan. It 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. The business goals may be defined for for-profit or for non-profit organizations.

Is there a need for having a business plan?

Yes. And I have browsed some reasons of having a business plan. These are the following:

1. To Map the Future

A business plan is not just required to secure funding at the start-up phase, but is a vital aid to help you manage your business more effectively. By committing your thoughts to paper, you can understand your business better and also chart specific courses of action that need to be taken to improve your business. A plan can detail alternative future scenarios and set specific objectives and goals along with the resources required to achieve these goals.

By understanding your business and the market a little better and planning how best to operate within this environment, you will be well placed to ensure your long-term success.

2. To Support Growth and Secure Funding

Most businesses face investment decisions during the course of their lifetime. Often, these opportunities cannot be funded by free cash flows alone, and the business must seek external funding. However, despite the fact that the market for funding is highly competitive, all prospective lenders will require access to the company’s recent Income Statements/Profit and Loss Statements, along with an up-to-date business plan. In essence the former helps investors understand the past, whereas the business plan helps give them a window on the future.

A well-written business plan can help you convey these points to prospective investors, helping them feel confident in you and in the thoroughness with which you have considered future scenarios. The most crucial component for them will be clear evidence of the company’s future ability to generate sufficient cash flows to meet debt obligations, while enabling the business to operate effectively.

3. To Develop and Communicate a Course of Action

A business plan helps a company assess future opportunities and commit to a particular course of action. By committing the plan to paper, all other options are effectively marginalized and the company is aligned to focus on key activities. The plan can assign milestones to specific individuals and ultimately help management to monitor progress. Once written, a plan can be disseminated quickly and will also prompt further questions and feedback by the readers helping to ensure a more collaborative plan is produced.

4. To Help Manage Cash flow

Careful management of cash flow is a fundamental requirement for all businesses. The reason is quite simple--many businesses fail, not because they are unprofitable, but because they ultimately become insolvent (i.e., are unable to pay their debts as they fall due). While the break-even point--where total revenue equals total costs--is a highly important figure for start-ups, once a business is up and running profitably, it becomes less important.

Cash flow management then becomes more vital when businesses pursue investment opportunities where there are significant cash out flows, in advance of the cash flows coming in. These opportunities need to be assessed against any seasonal variations in the business and the timing of the flows. If you are a ‘cash-only’ business, you can bank the income immediately; however, if you sell on credit, you receive the cash in the future and hence may need to pay some of your own expenses before that income hits your account.

This will put a further strain on the company’s solvency and hence a well structured business plan will help you manage funding requirements in advance.

5. To Support a Strategic Exit

Finally, at some point, the owners of the firm will decide it is time to exit. Considering the likely exit strategy in advance can help inform and direct present day decisions. The aim is to liquidate the investment, so the owner/current investors have the option of cashing out when they want.

Common exit strategies include;

Initial Public Offering of stock (IPO’s)
Acquisition by competitors
Mergers
Family succession
Management buy-outs

Information System. It is referred as the interaction of the process and technology. Information System has three major components – Hardware, software and peopleware. Hardware is the physical components; Software refers to programs that are being installed in the computer; Peopleware refers to the end-users.

Information System Plan. It is actually the process for developing a strategy and plans for aligning information systems with the business strategies of an organization.

In Information Planning, we have to consider the characteristics of a quality Information System Plan. These are the following:

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 should 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.

Now that we have known and differentiated the business from business plan, and information system from an information system plan, we can now distinguish the importance of having the business plan and the information system plan. The importance of business plan is that, it serves the following functions:

Helps management or an entrepreneur 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.
Serves as a basis for discussion with third parties such as shareholders, agencies, banks, investors etc.
Offers a benchmark against which actual performance can be measured and reviewed.

A business plan should be a realistic view of the expectations and long-term objectives for an established business or new venture. It provides the framework within which it must operate and, ultimately, succeed or fail. For management or entrepreneurs seeking external support, the plan is the most important sales document that they are ever likely to produce as it could be the key to raising finance etc. Preparation of a comprehensive plan will not guarantee success in raising funds or mobilizing support, but lack of a sound plan will, almost certainly, ensure failure. In a business plan, business plan process is also vital, for entrepreneurs to understand more clearly what they want to achieve, and how and when they can do it. Even if no external support is needed, a business plan can play a vital role in helping to avoid mistakes or recognize hidden opportunities. It is much easier to fold a sheet of paper than a business.

For many, many entrepreneurs and planners, the process of planning (thinking, discussing, researching and analyzing) is just as, or even more, useful than the final plan. So, even if you don't need a formal plan, think carefully about going through the planning process. It could be enormously beneficial to your business. A packaged business plan will make it easier to interest possible supporters, investors etc. A well-prepared business plan will demonstrate that the managers or entrepreneurs know the business and that they have thought through its development in terms of products, management, finances, and most importantly, markets and competition.

The relationship of Business Plan and Information System Plan: In making information system plan, it’s not just a simple plan that caters the current issue, but it should be a strategic plan to cater a wide scope of interest in the field of information technology. Strategic planning is actually aims to cater the major change of the organization from planning for information systems based on users’ demands to those based on business strategy. Information System Plan focuses in improving the management side and the to improve the performance of the business while on the other hand a Business Plan is focusing in the attainment of the goals of the business in short it gives more attention to the business side. Business-planning methods help people develop detailed plans at lower levels. Business-driven data modeling methods then help them to identify their information needs, based on those developed plans. Identified information is then provided. The Strategic Model was analyzed to identify Business Activities and develop Project Plans for data modeling. Activities were identified which management should assess, to identify priorities. These activities will become priority projects to be developed and delivered early to provide maximum benefit of any organization. The Strategic Information System Plan will make Business Plan to align its information systems directly with its strategic plans.

References:

http://www.planware.org/businessplan.htm#4
http://www.clarionmag.com/cmag/v3/informationsystemsplanning.pdf
http://viu.eng.rpi.edu/publications/strpaper.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_plan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_system
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information

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Subject: Assignment 2 Tue Dec 08, 2009 11:27 am

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 a Business
http://www.gaebler.com/Why-Are-Business-Plans-Important.htm
http://www.tdan.com/view-articles/5262

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Subject: Assignment # 2 Tue Dec 08, 2009 10:44 pm

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

One of the most common sets of activities in the management is planning. Very simply put, planning is setting the direction for something -- some system -- and then guiding the system to follow the direction. There are many kinds of planning in organizations. Common to these many kinds of planning are various phases of planning and guidelines for carrying them out as effectively as possible.

Before we distinguish the nature of business plan and Information System Plan let us first define its category to understand further its uses and essence.

What is Business Plan?

As I surf the net I found some definitions of business plan and according to wikipedia business plan is a written proposal addressed to potential lenders or investors. Typically, it describes a new business and tells why it is deserving of financial support (Earl C.). The first step beyond coming up with an idea for a business is to try and organize the idea. When organizing the idea the first consideration is the business plan. The business plan is a written organized bound book about your possible business. Before even writing the plan there is a great deal of information that must be gathered. This information will tell the person writing the plan more about the business and also create a good base to writing an industry analysis which will also let that person know how well that particular business is doing in the world.

In addition to that answer.com also provide a definition to business plan which state that 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 document prepared by a company's management, detailing the past, present, and future of the company, usually designed to attract capital investment.
And lastly 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 Importance

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 may also target changes in perception and branding by the customer, client, tax-payer, or larger community. A business plan having changes in perception and branding as its primary goals is called a marketing plan.

What is Information System Plan?

A process for developing a strategy and plans for aligning information systems with the business strategies of an organization.

Now after defining each plan, let us review each nature, importance and its strategy.

-Business Plan-
Here are five good reasons why you should write a business plan:

1) To test the feasibility of your business idea.

Writing a business plan is the best way to test whether or not an idea for starting a business is feasible, other than going out and doing it. In this sense, the business plan is your safety net; writing a business plan can save you a great deal of time and money if working through the business plan reveals that your business idea is untenable. Often, an idea for starting a business is discarded at the marketing analysis or competitive analysis stage, freeing you to move on to a new (and better) idea.

2) To give your new business the best possible chance of success.

Writing a business plan will ensure that you pay attention to both the broad operational and financial objectives of your new business and the details, such as budgeting and market planning. Taking the time to work through the process of writing a business plan will make for a smoother startup period and fewer unforeseen problems as your business becomes established.

3) To secure funding, such as bank loans.

You're going to need both operating and startup capital to start a new business and you have no hope of getting any money from established financial institutions such as banks without a well developed business plan. And established businesses often need money, too, to do things such as buy new equipment or property, or because of market downturns. Having a business plan gives you a much better chance of getting the money you need to keep operating or to expand.

4) To make business planning manageable and effective.

A business plan is essential if you're thinking of starting a business, but it's also an important tool for established businesses. Viable businesses are dynamic; they change and grow. The company's original business plan needs to be revised as new goals are set. Reviewing the business plan can also help you see what goals have been accomplished, what changes need to be made, or what new directions your company's growth should take.

5) To attract investors.

Whether you want to shop your business to venture capitalists, or attract angel investors, you need to have a solid business plan. A presentation may pique their interest, but they'll need a well-written document they can take away and study before they'll be prepared to make any investment commitment.
Be prepared for your business plan to be scrutinized; both venture capitalists and angel investors will want to conduct extensive background checks and competitive analysis to be certain that what's written in your business plan is indeed the case.

Writing a business plan is time-consuming, but it's essential if you want to have a successful business that's going to survive the startup phase. If your business doesn't have one, maybe it's time to start working on one. The process of writing a business plan can do wonders to clarify where you've been and where you're going.

-Information System Plan-

Information Technology strategy which determines the ‘how’ it is done, in terms of technology policies, a technology framework or architecture which drives, shapes and controls the IT infrastructure.

Strategic Information Systems Planning Methodologies

The task of strategic information systems planning is difficult and often time organizations do not know how to do it. Strategic information systems planning is a major change for organizations, from planning for information systems based on users’ demands to those based on business strategy. Also strategic information systems planning changes the planning characteristics in major ways.

For example, the time horizon for planning changes from 1 year to 3 years or more and development plans are driven by current and future business needs rather than incremental user needs. Increase in the time horizon is a factor which results in poor response from the top management to the strategic information systems planning process as it is difficult to hold their attention for such a long period.

Other questions associated with strategic information systems planning are related to the scope of the planning study, the focus of the planning exercise – corporate organization vs. strategic business unit, number of studies and their sequence, choosing a strategic information systems planning methodology or developing one if none is suitable, targets of planning process and deliverables. Because of the complexity of the strategic information systems planning process and uniqueness of each organization, there is no one best way to tackle it.

After we define business plan and information system plan we can now give the relationship of the two. In my own notion no matter how small your business is, creating a business plan is always a good idea. A business plan that includes thorough market research and analysis about your industry will help you identify your vision, costs, goals and obstacles. If you intend to seek financing for your business, you must have a business. The primary job of a business owner is to manage and run a business. The term manage implies the task of planning and execution.

The process of business planning helps reduce risks. he relationship of the business plan and the Strategic Information System Plan are the business plan is only focusing in the attainment of the goals of the business in short it gives more attention to the business side while the Strategic Information System Plan focuses in improving the management side and to improve the performance of the business. For me the Business Plan and the Strategic Information System are very essential in a business and these two factors can lead you to the right path of business. As a conclusion, if you don’t have goal in your life why you are still living now? We live in this world to reach our own goals and make your goals as your inspiration. Don’t wait for your goal you must work for it.

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_plan
http://www.entrepreneur.com/startingabusiness/businessplans/businessplancoachtimberry/article83818.html
http://viu.eng.rpi.edu/publications/strpaper.pdf
http://sbinfocanada.about.com/cs/businessplans/a/bizplanwhy.htm

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Subject: Assignment 2 Wed Dec 09, 2009 9:55 am

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

Business plan and IS Plan? First let’s describe first these two in order to fully understand the concepts.

What is a Business Plan?
According to http://www.answers.com , a company's business plan is one of its most important documents. It can be used by managers and executives for internal planning. It can be used as the basis for loan applications from banks and other lenders. It can be used to persuade investors that a company is a good investment. For start-up ventures, the process of preparing a business plan serves as a road map to the future by making entrepreneurs and business owners think through their strategies, evaluate their basic business concepts, recognize their business's limitations, and avoid a variety of mistakes.
Virtually every business needs a business plan. Lack of proper planning is one of the most often cited reasons for business failures. Business plans help companies identify their goals and objectives and provide them with tactics and strategies to reach those goals. They are not historical documents; rather, they embody a set of management decisions about necessary steps for the business to reach its objectives and perform in accordance with its capabilities.
"By its very definition, a business plan is a plan for the business, clarifying why it exists, who it exists for, what products and services it provides these client groups, how it intends to develop and deliver these products and services, and where it is headed," Rebecca Jones wrote in Information Outlook. "A business plan is a roadmap for the organization, showing the destination it seeks, the path it will follow to get there, and the supplies and wherewithal required to complete the journey."
Situations That Require a Business Plan
Business plans have several major uses. These include internal planning and forecasting, obtaining funding for ongoing operations or expansion, planned divestiture and spin-offs, and restructuring or reorganizing. While business plans have elements common to all uses, most business plans are tailored according to their specific use and intended audience.
When used for internal planning, business plans can provide a blueprint for the operation of an entire company. A company's performance and progress can be measured against planned goals involving sales, expenditures, time frame, and strategic direction. Business plans also help an entrepreneur or business manager identify and focus on potential problem areas, both inside and outside the company. Once potentially troublesome areas have been identified, proposed solutions and contingency plans can be incorporated into the business plan.
Business plans also cover such areas as marketing opportunities and future financing requirements that require management attention. In some instances—such as scenarios in which an entrepreneur decides to turn a favorite hobby into a home-based business enterprise—the business plan can be a simple document of one or two pages. A business proposal of significant complexity and financial importance, however, should include a far more comprehensive plan. A tool and die manufacturer looking for investors to expand production capacity, for example, will in all likelihood need to compose a business plan of greater depth and detail than will a computer enthusiast who decides to launch a desktop publishing business out of his/her home.
Ideally, everyone in the company will use the information contained in the company's business plan, whether to set performance targets, guide decision-making with regard to ongoing operations, or assess personnel performance in terms of the their ability to meet objectives set forth in the business plan. In addition, workers who are informed about the business plan can evaluate and adjust their own performance in terms of company objectives and expectations.
Business plans can also be used in the restructuring or reorganization of a business. In such cases, business plans describe actions that need to be taken in order to restore profitability or reach other goals. Necessary operational changes are identified in the plan, along with corresponding reductions in expenses. Desired performance and operational objectives are delineated, often with corresponding changes in production equipment, work force, and certain products and/or services.
Banks and other lenders use business plans to evaluate a company's ability to handle more debt and, in some cases, equity financing. The business plan documents the company's cash flow requirements and provides a detailed description of its assets, capitalization, and projected financial performance. It provides potential lenders and investors with verifiable facts about a company's performance so that risks can be accurately identified and evaluated.
Finally, the business plan is the primary source of information for potential purchasers of a company or one of its divisions or product lines. As with outside lenders and investors, business plans prepared for potential buyers provide them with verifiable facts and projections about the company's performance. The business plan must communicate the basic business premise or concept of the company, present its strengths as well as weaknesses, and provide indications of the company's long-term viability. When a company is attempting to sell off a division or product line, the business plan defines the new business entity.

What is an IS Plan?

• Information systems planning: the translation of strategic and organizational goals into systems development initiatives
• Aligning organizational goals and IS goals is critical for any successful systems development effort
• Determining whether organizational and IS goals are aligned can be difficult

The information systems planning refer to the process of the translation of strategic and organizational goals into systems development plan and initiatives. For example, part of the information systems plan for a luxury car company might be to build a new product tracking system to meet the organizational goal of improving customer service. Proper information systems planning ensure that specific systems development objectives support organizational goals. One of the primary benefits of information systems planning is that it provides a long-range view of information technology use in the organization. The information systems plan provides guidance on how the information systems infrastructure of the organization should be developed over time. The plan serves as a road map indicating the direction and rationale of systems development. Another benefit of information systems planning is that it ensures better use of information systems resources, including funds, information systems personnel, and time for scheduling specific projects.

The advances in information technology have affected the lives of most of the human beings in their day-to day lives. With the passage of time, the technology has evolved immensely and so have the opportunities. Information Technology is being used in the business activities for improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the people and the business on the whole. The increasing demand of IS IT has made the management of the more and more complex and difficult. In order to manage the IS/IT based systems; it is important to have an appropriate strategy that defines the systems and provide means to manage the systems. Strategic information systems planning (SISP) is an effective way of developing and maintaining the IS/IT systems that support the business operations. This research examines the key aspect of SISP in the changing business scenario. The alignment of the IS/IT plans and the business plans is essential for improved business performance. There was similarity in terms of planning and implementation of the IS/IT and business processes and the use of ERP, SCM and CRM applications to support the business processes.

Information systems that are developed in response to corporate business initiative, they are intended to give competitive advantage to the organization. They may deliver a product or service that is at a lower cost, that is differentiated, that focuses on a particular market segment, or is innovative.

Strategic information systems are those computer systems that implement business strategies; they are those systems where information services resources are applied to strategic business opportunities in such a way that the computer systems have an impact on the organization’s products and business operations. Strategic information systems are always systems that are developed in response to corporate business initiative. The ideas in several well-known cases came from information Services people, but they were directed at specific corporate business thrusts. In other cases, the ideas came from business operational people, and Information Services supplied the technological capabilities to realize profitable results. Most information systems are looked on as support activities to the business. They mechanize operations for better efficiency, control, and effectiveness, but they do not, in themselves, increase corporate profitability. They are simply used to provide management with sufficient dependable information to keep the business running smoothly, and they are used for analysis to plan new directions. Strategic information systems, on the other hand, become an integral and necessary part of the business, and directly influence market share, earnings, and all other aspects of marketplace profitability. They may even bring in new products, new markets, and new ways of doing business. They directly affect the competitive stance of the organization, giving it an advantage against the competitors. Most literature on strategic information systems emphasizes the dramatic breakthroughs in computer systems, such as American Airline’s Sabre System and American Hospital Supply’s terminals in customer offices. These, and many other highly successful approaches are most attractive to think about, and it is always possible that an equivalent success may be attained in your organization. There are many possibilities for strategic information systems, however, which may not be dramatic breakthroughs, but which will certainly become a part of corporate decision making and will, increase corporate profitability. The development of any strategic information systems always enhances the image of information Services in the organization, and leads to information management having a more participatory role in the operation of the organization.

The three general types of information systems that are developed and in general use are financial systems, operational systems, and strategic systems. These categories are not mutually exclusive and, in fact, they always overlap to some. Well-directed financial systems and operational systems may well become the strategic systems for a particular organization.
Financial systems are the basic computerization of the accounting, budgeting, and finance operations of an organization. These are similar and ubiquitous in all organizations because the computer has proven to be ideal for the mechanization and control or financial systems; these include the personnel systems because the headcount control and payroll of a company is of prime financial concern. Financial systems should be one of the bases of all other systems because they give a common, controlled measurement of all operations and projects, and can supply trusted numbers for indicating departmental or project success. Organizational planning must be tied to financial analysis. There is always a greater opportunity to develop strategic systems when the financial systems are in place, and required figures can be readily retrieved from them.

Operational systems, or services systems, help control the details of the business. Such systems will vary with each type of enterprise. They are the computer systems that operational managers need to help run the business on a routing basis. They may be useful but mundane systems that simply keep track of inventory, for example, and print out reorder points and cost allocations. On the other hand, they may have a strategic perspective built into them, and may handle inventory in a way that dramatically impacts profitability. A prime example of this is the American Hospital Supply inventory control system installed on customer premises. Where the great majority of inventory control systems simply smooth the operations and give adequate cost control, this well-know hospital system broke through with a new version of the use of an operational system for competitive advantage. The great majority of operational systems for which many large and small computer systems have been purchased, however, simply help to manage and automate the business. They are important and necessary, but can only be put into the "strategic" category it they have a pronounced impact on the profitability of the business.

All businesses should have both long-range and short-range planning of operational systems to ensure that the possibilities of computer usefulness will be seized in a reasonable time. Such planning will project analysis and costing, system development life cycle considerations, and specific technology planning, such as for computers, databases, and communications. There must be computer capacity planning, technology forecasting, and personnel performance planning. It is more likely that those in the organization with entrepreneurial vision will conceive of strategic plans when such basic operational capabilities are in place and are well managed. Operational systems, then, are those that keep the organization operating under control and most cost effectively. Any of them may be changed to strategic systems if they are viewed with strategic vision. They are fertile grounds for new business opportunities. Strategic systems are those that link business and computer strategies. They may be systems where a new business thrust has been envisioned and its advantages can be best realized through the use of information technology. They may be systems where new computer technology has been made available on the market, and planners with an entrepreneurial spirit perceive how the new capabilities can quickly gain competitive advantage. They may be systems where operational management people and Information Services people have brainstormed together over business problems, and have realized that a new competitive thrust is possible when computer methods are applied in a new way.

http://www.coda.ac.nz/unitec_scit_di/1/
http://www.answers.com
http://www.monografias.com/
Fundamentals of Information Systems, 3rd Edition

Subject: Assignment 2 Thu Dec 10, 2009 7:51 pm

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

Before we discuss the relationship of Business Plan and an Information System Plan, let us first discuss the definition of both fields. Lets discuss each connections according to each definition.

Business Plan / Business Planning

According to the wikipedia...\"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.
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 may also target changes in perception and branding by the customer, client, tax-payer, or larger community. A business plan having changes in perception and branding as its primary goals is called a marketing plan.\"
\"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.
\"Operational plans describe the goals of an internal organization, working group or department. Project plans, sometimes known as project frameworks, describe the goals of a particular project. They may also address the project\'s place within the organization\'s larger strategic goals.\"
It is clearly said above that business plan is a statements to performed set of business goals. The said data also talk about the essence of what is business plan. I can agree to the above statement because it is clearly stated there that business plans focuses on business goals / financial goals. In business, a profit is one of the important thing to do on business planning. Planning in a business mostly concerns on maximizing profits. Nowadays we can say that technology is all around, the big deal with it is that technology really matters on business. That is why information technology really matters on business planning. A business plan is simply a road map. It sets out your goals. It outlines where you\'re going with your business and how you plan to get there. As a home-based business you will probably not be seeking investors or getting a loan to start your business, so preparing a business plan is not for someone else\'s benefit. It\'s for you, so you are know what you\'re doing and how you\'re doing at each step along the way. Having such an operating plan to guide your daily activities can prevent you from making costly mistakes.
Let us take some examples of a business plans. Here are some element of a business plans that you need to follow in order to succeed on you plans. These are tips on how you should start building a business plans:
The Basics

How Long Should Your Plan Be?

Who Needs a Business Plan?

Finding the Right Plan for You

Types of Plans

Plan Your Plan

Determine Your Objectives

Your Financing Goals

How Will You Use Your Plan

Assess Your Company\'s Potential

Elements of a Business Plan

Executive Summary

Business Description

Market Strategies

Competitive Analysis

Design and Development Plan

Operations and Management Plans

Financial Components

Get Help With Your Plan

Hiring a Consultant

Organizations

State-By-State List of Commerce Departments

Software and Books

Information System

According to wikipedia..I\"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. Information systems are the primary focus of study for the information systems discipline and for organisational informatics.\"

Information System Plan / Information System Planning

1.)Planning terminology-mission: it is a broad enduring statement giving the organizations “reason for being”.
2.)objectives-:are desired future positions and destinations the organizations intends to reach in order to fulfill its mission.
3.)Strategies-it’s a general direction in which an objective is to be sought .
4.)Policies-is a general guideline that directs and constraints decision –making within an organization.

It Involves:

I) Identification of the stage of IS in the org.
ii) Identification of the applications of organizational ISs,
iii) Evaluation of each of these applications ,based on established evaluation criteria
iv) Establishing a priority ranking for these application, and
V)Determining the’optimum’architectutre of IS for serving the top priority applications

NOLAN stage model:

Stage 1-initiation stage-in this, the technology is placed in the organization\'s
few applications in the organization are computerized
Stage-2 expansion stage-rapid and uncontrolled growth in the number and variety of IT applications take place
Stage-3 formalization or control stage because in this stage organizations gain control over the technology’s resources by implementing formal control processes and standards.
Stage 4- Nolan has described this growth stage as maturity or integration stage as by this stage organizations gain sufficient experience and maturity in IS/IT applications.
In this stage, applications are integrated ,controls are adjusted.
Planning is well established and so, we call this stage as the stage of perfection also.
Stage 5(Integration Stage) - In this the use of new technology increases rapidly, providing new benefits.
Stage 6-data administration, in this controls are further lowered to encourage development of systems which contribute to strategic advantage of the organization.
Stage 7-in the enhance growth model this stage is termed as the maturity stage which indicates the application portfolio is complete and matches the objectives of the org.

Stages of Information System Planning:

1.Strategic planning
A) derivation from the organizational plan
B) Strategic fit with organizational culture
C) Strategy set transformation
2.Information requirement analysis
A) Define underlying organizational requirements
B) Develop sub system matrix
C) Define and evaluate information requirements for organizational sub-systems
3.Resource Allocation
A) Return on investment
B) Charge out
C) Portfolio approach
D) Steering committees
4.Project Planning
A)milestones
B)critical path method
C)gantt chart

Here is some example of an Information System Plan gathered from the Internet:

Every year, $300-700 million dollar corporations spend about 5% of their gross income on information systems and their supports. That\'s from about $15,000,000 to $35,000,000! A significant part of those funds support enterprise databases, a philosophy of database system applications that enable corporations to research the past, control the present, and plan for the future.
Even though an information system costs from $1,000,000 to $10,000,000, and even through most chief information officers (CIOs) can specify exactly how much money is being spent for hardware, software, and staff, CIOs cannot however state with any degree of certainty why one system is being done this year versus next, why it is being done ahead of another, or finally, why it is being done at all.
Many enterprises do not have model-based information systems development environments that allow system designers to see the benefits of rearranging an information systems development schedule. Consequently, the questions that cannot be answered include:
What effect will there be on the overall schedule if an information system is purchased versus developed?
At what point does it pay to hire an abnormal quantity of contract staff to advance a schedule?
What is the long term benefit from 4GL versus 3GL?
Is it better to generate 3GL than to generate/use a 4GL?
What are the real costs of distributed software development over centralized development?
If these questions were transformed and applied to any other component of a business (e.g., accounting, manufacturing, distribution and marketing), and remained unanswered, that unit\'s manager would surely be fired!
We not only need answers to these questions NOW!, we also need them quickly, cost effectively, and in a form that they can be modeled and changed in response to unfolding realities. This paper provides a brief review of a successful 10-step strategy that answers these questions.
Too many half-billion dollar organizations have only a vague notion of the names and interactions of the existing and under development information systems. Whenever they need to know, a meeting is held among the critical few, an inventory is taken, interactions confirmed, and accomplishment schedules are updated.
This ad hoc information systems plan was possible only because all design and development was centralized, the only computer was a main-frame, and the past was acceptable prologue because budgets were ever increasing, schedules always slipping, and information was not yet part of the corporation\'s critical edge.
Well, today is different, really different! Budgets are decreasing, and slipped schedules are being cited as preventing business alternatives. Confounding the computing environment are different operating systems, DBMSs, development tools, telecommunications (LAN, WAN, Intra-, Inter-, and Extra-net), and distributed hard- and software.
Rather than having centralized, long-range planning and management activities that address these problems, today\'s business units are using readily available tools to design and build ad hoc stop-gap solutions. These ad hoc systems not only do not interconnect, support common semantics, or provide synchronized views of critical corporate policy, they are soon to form the almost impossible to comprehend confusion of systems and data from which systems order and semantic harmony must spring.
Not only has the computing landscape become profoundly different and more difficult to comprehend, the need for just the right--and correct--information at just the right time is escalating. Late or wrong information is worse than no information.
Information systems managers need a model of their information systems environment. A model that is malleable. As new requirements are discovered, budgets modified, new hardware/software introduced, this model must be such that it can reconstitute the information systems plan in a timely and efficient manner.

..As I see the above data gathered about the business plan and the information system plan, I can say that both fields are proportional. But the Information System Plan is somehow a wide scope of a business Plan, Business planning would not be successful nowadays without the visibility of Information system Planning. Therefore the nature of relationship of business plan is proportional to the information system plan, because nowadays all of the company relies on the strength of their technology or to their information system. Information is a very important thing to business therefore there nature of relationship is somehow alike.

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

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[size=18]What should be the nature of the relationship between the business plan and the IS plan?

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

in organizations, each of them has a plan specifically business plans, and others also have information system plan or the IS plan. Each plan plays a vital role for the organization to be competitive. in our assgnment2 in MIS2 we are tasked to distinguish the relationship of the two plans which is the business and IS plan. before that i would like to give the meaning of each of the plan.

In planning we should make a goal so that we can identify if our plan was successfully done. The plans were not only for the profitable organizations, but also for the non profitable organizations

Business plan (decision making tool)
Business plans are decision-making tools. There is no fixed content for a business plan. Rather the content and format of the business plan is determined by the goals and audience. A business plan should contain whatever information is needed to decide whether or not to pursue a goal. . as what ive said the business plans are not only for profitable organization but also for non-profitable organizations. The profitable organization focuses on the how to attain income or the process of creation of wealth. The non-profitable organization like government agency, has also a plan that focuses on organizations mission, to the tax exemption of their services. Business plans may also target changes in perception and branding by the customer, client, tax-payer, or larger community. A business plan having changes in perception and branding as its primary goals is called a marketing plan.

Factors that need to be considered in making a business plan. First is the vision statement or stating what you want to achieve upon planning. Next is the people, do you have enough people or do you have people that are good enough that will play an important rule in implementing this plan. And of course the last is you should undergo an assessment, for you to know if the business plan you were implementing is effective to attain your visions.

A business plan is the cornerstone of starting a business as well as a significant tool for monitoring the progress and growth of a company. With this, having a business plan is essential to the company or business with this following reason:

To test the feasibility of your business idea. Writing a business plan is the best way to test whether or not an idea for starting a business is feasible, other than going out and doing it. The business plan is a business safety net. Writing a business plan can save a great deal of time and money, if working through the business plan reveals that your business idea is unsustainable. With this you can test if having your idea business is feasible, and if not this help freeing you to move on to a new and better idea.
To give your new business the best possible chance of success. It is vital to the success of the business. Writing a business plan will ensure that you pay attention to both the broad operational and financial objectives of your new business and the details, such as budgeting and market planning. Taking the time to work through the process of writing a business plan will make for a smoother startup period and fewer unforeseen problems as your business becomes established.

To secure funding. To start a business, it needs to have both operating and start up capital. Some business has their capital from financial institutions such as banks in which they expect that business has a developed business plan. And established businesses usually need money for their business operations. With this, the role of having a business plan will at least gives you an assurance and chance to keep the business operating or maybe an expansion.
To make business planning manageable and effective. A business plan is essential if you're thinking of starting a business, but it's also an important tool for established businesses. The company's original business plan needs to be revised as new goals are set, to adopt the changes in business industry. Reviewing the business plan can also help a company or corporation see what goals have been accomplished, what changes need to be made, or what new directions to a company's growth should take.
To attract investors. Having a solid business plan, this is a plus factor to the company in which investors pull towards the company to invest. A company business plan will be the basis of the investor to do some background checks to the company.

Preparing the Business Plan

The process of preparing and developing a business plan is an interactive one that involves every functional area of a company. Successful business plans are usually the result of team effort, in which all employees provide input based on their special areas of expertise and technical skill. Business owners and managers provide overall support for the planning process as well as general guidelines and feedback on the plan as it is being developed.

Once the planning process has been fully organized, participants can begin the process of assessment. Internal evaluations include identification of strengths and weaknesses of all areas of the business. In addition, it is generally useful to assess and evaluate such external factors as the general economy, competition, relevant technologies, trends, and other circumstances outside the control of the company that can affect its performance or fundamental health.

Setting goals and defining strategies are the next key steps in the planning process. Using the assessment and evaluation of internal and external factors, fundamental goals for the business are developed. Pertinent areas to be studied include the company's competitive philosophy, its market focus, and its customer service philosophy. Specific performance and operational strategies are then established, based on these goals.

After strategies and goals have been defined, they are translated into specific plans and programs. These plans and programs determine how a company's resources will be managed in order to implement its strategies and achieve its goals. Specific areas that require their own plans and programs include the overall organization of the company, sales and marketing, products and production, and finance. Finally, these specific plans are assembled into the completed business plan.

Elements of a Business Plan

Business plans must include authoritative, factual data, usually obtained from a wide range of sources. The plans must be written in a consistent and realistic manner. Contradictions or inconsistencies within a business plan create doubts in the minds of its readers. Problems and risks associated with the business should be described rather than avoided, then used as the basis for presenting thoughtful solutions and contingency plans. Business plans can be tailored to the needs and interests of specific audiences by emphasizing or presenting differently certain categories of information in different versions of the plan.

Business plans contain a number of specific elements as well as certain general characteristics. These include a general description of the company and its products or services, an executive summary, management and organizational charts, sales and marketing plans, financial plans, and production plans. They describe the general direction of a company in terms of its underlying philosophy, goals, and objectives. Business plans explain specific steps and actions that will be taken as well as their rationale. That is, they not only tell how a company will achieve its strategic objectives, they also tell why specific decisions have been made. Anticipated problems and the company's response to them are usually included. In effect, business plans are a set of management decisions about how the company will proceed along a specified course of action, with justifications for those decisions. Listed below are brief descriptions of the major elements found in business plans.

Include the same information on the title page. If you have a logo, you can use it, too. A table of contents follows the executive summary or statement of purpose, so that readers can quickly find the information or financial data they need.

Information System Plan (ISP)
An IS plan is a plan that focuses on the system that is used by an organization. That is either profitable or non-profitable organizations. IS plan are for systems that are currently implemented in an organization, these systems are either manual or automation. This plan was design so that the systems they were implementing are become more effective in the extent that it will help the organization to achieve or to attain their vision and goals.

Factors that need to be consider in making information system plan is that it should be flexible and continuously improving the performance of an organization. It should fit to the needs of the needs and requirements of the organization.

a.) 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.

b.) 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.

c.) Maintainable -The ISP should 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.

d.) 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.

e.) 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.

Relationship between the Business Plan and the Information System Plan

Before, the relationship between the business strategy or plan and the information function was not made interest and awareness of the Top Management of the companies or firms. At that time, information systems were thought to be synonymous with the company data processing and were treated as some back-room operation in support of day-to-day ordinary tasks.
In the 80’s and 90’s, however, there has been a growing realization of the need to make information systems of strategic importance to an organization. As a result, strategic information systems planning (SISP) is a important issue. In many industry surveys, improved SISP is often mentioned as the most serious challenge facing by the Information System managers.

With this, strategic information system planning is the analysis of a corporation’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 the strategic direction of the company. Also, an article has emphasized the need to note that SISP is a management function and not a technical one. This is consistent with the earlier distinction between the older data processing (this was first era of three-era model information system application of John Ward) views and the modern strategic importance view of Information Systems. SISP thus is used to identify the best targets for purchasing and installing new management information systems and help an organization maximize the return on its information technology investment. A portfolio of computer-based applications is identified that will assist an organization in executing its business plans and realize its business goals. There is a growing realization that the application of information technology (IT) to a firm’s strategic activities has been one of the most common and effective ways to improve business performance.

The task of strategic information systems planning is difficult and often time organizations do not know how to do it. Strategic information systems planning is a major change for organizations, from planning for information systems based on users’ demands to those based on business strategy and plan.

Own view…

These plans are somewhat similar because it envisions the company to be more competitive in the industry. They were related because they really want nothing but for the good of the organization.

reference:
http://www.tdan.com/view-articles/5262
http://www.clarionmag.com/cmag/v3/informationsystemsplanning.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_plan
http://www.myownbusiness.org/s2/

Posts : 50 Points : 52 Join date : 2009-06-22 Age : 33

Before I answer the question I must define first the two categories to understand more about their roles and their description.

Business Plan

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.

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 may also target changes in perception and branding by the customer, client, tax-payer, or larger community. A business plan having changes in perception and branding as its primary goals is called a marketing plan.

Information System Plan

Today, most organizations in all sectors of industry, commerce and government are fundamentally dependent on their information systems. Thus, organizations or companies are increasingly looking toward the application of technology not only to strengthen existing business operations but also to create new opportunities that provide them with a source of competitive advantage.

Planning for information systems, as for any other system, begins with the identification of needs. In order to be effective, development of any type of computer-based system should be a response to need--whether at the transaction processing level or at the more complex information and support systems levels. Such planning for information systems is much like strategic planning in management.

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

There should be a good communication relationship between the two plans because IS plan rely on the Business plan of a certain company. The objectives of the IS plan should co inside with the objectives of Business plan because Information Systems rely only to the needs of a Business for it to succeed.

References:
wikipedea.org

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

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Posts : 49 Points : 59 Join date : 2009-06-22 Age : 37

The nature relationship of the Business plan and the IS plan...

Before anything else i would the discuss first the definition of business plan and IS plan according to Wikipedia..

Business Plan

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.

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 may also target changes in perception and branding by the customer, client, tax-payer, or larger community. A business plan having changes in perception and branding as its primary goals is called a marketing plan.

Business Systems Planning (BSP):

This methodology, developed by IBM, combines top down
planning with bottom up implementation. The methodology focuses on business processes which in
turn are derived from an organization’s business mission, objectives and goals. Business processes
are analyzed to determine data needs and, then, data classes. Similar data classes are combined to
develop databases. The final BSP plan describes an overall information systems architecture as well
as installation schedule of individual systems

(c) there is a problem of bridging the gap between top down planning and bottom up
implementation.
(d) it does not incorporate a software design methodology.
(e) major weakness of BSP is the considerable time and effort required for its successful
implementation.

IS Planning

Planning for information systems, as for any other system, begins with the identification of
needs. In order to be effective, development of any type of computer-based system should be a
response to need--whether at the transaction processing level or at the more complex information and
support systems levels. Such planning for information systems is much like strategic planning in
management. Objectives, priorities, and authorization for information systems projects need to be
formalized. The systems development plan should identify specific projects slated for the future,
priorities for each project and for resources, general procedures, and constraints for each application
area. The plan must be specific enough to enable understanding of each application and to know
where it stands in the order of development. Also the plan should be flexible so that priorities can be
adjusted if necessary.

Strategic Systems Planning (SSP):

Also known as PROplanner and developed by Robert
Holland, this methodology is similar to BSP. A business functional model is defined by analyzing
major functional areas of a business. A data architecture is derived from the business function
model by combining information requirements into generic data entities and subject databases. New
systems and their implementation schedules are derived from this architecture. This architecture is
then used to identify new systems and their implementation schedule. Although steps in the SSP
procedure are similar to those in the BSP, a major difference between SSP and BSP is SSP’s
automated handling of the data collected during the SISP process. Software produces reports in a
wide range of formats and with various levels of detail. Affinity reports show the frequencies of
accesses to data and clustering reports give guidance for database design. Users are guided through
menus for on-line data collection and maintenance. The software also provides a data dictionary
interface for sharing SSP data with an existing data dictionary or other automated design tools.
Steps in the SSP procedure are shown in figure 5. In addition to SSP, Holland System’s
Corporation also offers two other methodologies - one for guiding the information system
architecture and another for developing data structures for modules from the SISP study. The
strengths and weaknesses of BSP apply to SSP as well.

Conclusion:

Both Business and IS planning are aiming for a good and effective output both of them are usually used in the business. Business planning is dealing with the goal of the company which is to earn more profit while the IS planning are the one who help the business plan to be more competitive in the sense of making the system to be automated so that business process will be more faster than ordinary transaction or manual transaction.

Issue for the business and IS planning:

One of the key elements of strategic planning for information systems (IS) is the integration of information systems planning (ISP) with business planning (BP). This integration enables IS to support business strategies more effectively. Although this issue has received significant attention in recent years, empirical research focusing specifically on BP-ISP integration is still relatively sparse. This research extends existing results by examining the evolution of BP-ISP integration and the contingency variables that may influence BP-ISP integration.The results confirmed the existence of an evolutionary pattern that can be defined in terms of movement through four types of BP-ISP integration: administrative integration to sequential integration to reciprocal integration to full integration. Only a few firms indicated that they had reached full integration. Bypassed phases and reverse evolution, though observed, were uncommon. Among the contingency variables, the business competence of the IS executive appeared to be a key factor in influencing the extent of integration.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_plan
http://viu.eng.rpi.edu/publications/strpaper.pdf

Posts : 38 Points : 42 Join date : 2009-06-22

Nature of Relationship between Business plan an IS plan

There is considerable debate in the academic literature on the issue of business/IS alignment. As yet, no one has come up with a universal methodology for achieving it. However, there is significant consensus that business planning should not be done in isolation. Indeed, it has to be done in conjunction with IT plans and both plans need to be developed collaboratively by a team consisting of business-focused managers and technology-focused IS professionals. Clearly, the implication is that, when writing an IT strategic plan, chief information officers (CIOs) should not wait until the business plan is formulated. CIOs should be active participants in the development of both strategies. The point that a sequential approach to alignment is not effective and that “a better approach is one in which strategies, processes, technologies and actions are defined and aligned concurrently.” Similarly, The development of IS strategy during the same process and at the same time as business strategies if organizations are to derive maximum advantage from IT systems.

The reality in many organizations, however, is that they have no formal business planning process, let alone an IS strategic planning process. Almost a third of respondents did not have a formal business plan—that is, a written plan. Perhaps a detailed written plan is not always essential as long as both parties—business-savvy managers and IT specialists—are well informed about the corporate aims and objectives and participate in the informal planning process to understand how technology can
help the organization in realizing them .

Over the past twenty years, information systems (IS) planning has consistently remained among the top ten issues facing senior executives. A key aspect of strategic IS planning is the need for alignment between business planning (BP) and information systems planning (ISP). In the context of BP and ISP, alignment means that business and IS plans (the outputs of the planning process) should be in harmony and consistent with one another. In other words, similar to aligning things to make them congruent, business and IS strategic alignment can be defined as the alignment of IS goals, strategies and processes with the goals, strategies and the processes of the business enterprise.

It appears that IS planninghas decreased in ranking (though it still remains among the top five issues) while business–information technology (IT) alignment has remained the top key issue since 2004. Although this issue has received significant attention in recent years, empirical research focusing specifically on BP–ISP alignment appears to have somewhat slowed down. Note that this chapter focuses on the alignment between IS strategy/plan and business strategy/plan, and between IS planning and business planning. When the concept of deriving IS strategy from business strategy was first, it dealt primarily with the content of plans—that is, deriving theIS mission, strategy and objectives from the mission, strategy and constraints of the strategicbusiness plan. Even when the “reverse” transformation of having IS influence business strategy was first discussed, the focus was on content.

Little attention was given to the alignment of the IS strategic planning process with the business planning process until IBM used the other approach as the basis for their business systems planning (BSP) process. IBM’s use of these ideas with their customers around the globe was significant in popularizing and extending their application to the consideration of both content and process. Subsequently, various researchers have emphasized the importance of enterprise architectureand strategic planning methodologies/ frameworks for creating alignment. Examples of IS planning methodologies/frameworks that suggest how IS can support or be aligned with business include: BSP and Business Information Control Study (BICS), and critical success factors (CSFs), value chain, customer resource life cycle, and strategic thrusts. In addition, authors have also examined the creation of business-aligned IS strategy in practice. However, a review of such literature, which would include details of different strategic IS planning processes and frameworks, is beyond the scope of this chapter.

Various terms are often used synonymously to describe alignment, namely, “bridge”, “congruence”, “consistency”, “coordination”, “fit”, “fusion”, “harmony”, “integration”, “linkage”, and “match”.

The need for BP–ISP alignment or more generally, business–IT alignment, has been emphasized in both prescriptive and empirical studies. The basic premise of the importance of alignment is that greater alignment between IS and business will lead to better performance. Alignment has been examined in various contexts, such as mergers and acquisitions, enterprise systems implementation, critical success factors of business and IS executives, software development processes, Internet usage, and interorganizational relationships. However, the focus of this chapter is mainly on the alignment of business planning/strategies with IS planning/strategies.

Alignment is important because it helps to: ensure that information systems are targeted on areas that are critical to successful business performance, ensure that the IS function supports organizational goals and activities at every level, enhance top management’s understanding of the significance of IS, and increases IS management’s understanding of business objectives, ensure that ISP activities are coordinated with BP activities so that the IS function can better support business strategies and contribute to the achievement of business value, facilitate acquisition and deployment of information technology that is congruent with the organization’s competitive needs rather than existing patterns of usage within the organization, heighten the stature of IS within the organization, thus facilitating the financial and managerial support necessary to effectively implement innovative, maximize returns on IT investment, help achieve competitive advantage through IS, provide direction and flexibility to react to new opportunities.

Reference:
WIKIPEDIA.org

Posts : 28 Points : 32 Join date : 2009-06-22

What should be the nature of the relationship between the business plan and the IS plan? (at least 2000 words)

I can say the two plans which is the business plan and Information System plan are closely related and connected to one another. As an Information Technology student who is enrolled to this subject Management Information System (MIS), we are well aware of the relation of the business to the importance of information system to the performance of a successful organization. To have a better view on my point, it is better to define the two plans, states their relationship, its differences, how it is used in the organization and how they are related to one another.

Bplans.com define business plan as any plan that works for a business to look ahead, allocate resources, focus on key points, and prepare for problems and opportunities. In investors sides they are more interested to gain profit to their investments. Many thinks that a business is only necessary when starting up a business, but for my own opinion it is a must to have a business plan from the starting the business, operation to its maintenance. It is vital in running a business. Businesses need plans to optimize growth and development according to priorities. Businesses need plans to optimize growth and development according to priorities. Implementation details are what make things happen. Your brilliant strategies and beautifully formatted planning documents are just theory unless you assign responsibilities, with dates and budgets, follow up with those responsible, and track results. Business plans are really about getting results and improving your company.

If you want to make your organization continue in business, having a business plan is a wise move. Competitors are just around you rising in an instance. You must be well prepared for it. Putting up a business does not end when you have started it; a long process is yet to come. A feasible and realistic plan and steps is needed to keep your business in the track. You must be able to know where you want your company needs to go, forewarn what are the possible obstacle you may go through, determine the company goals and planned on how are you are you going to reach these goals. Those are necessary if you want your business to last. Assessing your organization on where you are right now, the external and internal factors that affect the organization’s performance and planning some strategies to cope up to the fast changing environment.

Information System Plan it is the process of developing or creating an Information System as well as implementing and maintaining it within a specific organization. As I surf the internet regarding information system plan and as an IT student I can say that it is a need for an organization to have an Information System Plan (ISP) to enable to compete to the fast changing and competitive world of business and technology. Why we have to implement one? Is it necessary for your organization? Is it a wise move and cost effective? What are the things to be needed and how will it be done? These are just some question you ask in your mind. In relation to our class discussion on Strategic Planning, I would suggest to make the ISP a strategic one. Why? Because as we all know we are living in a very fast changing environment it is necessary that our ISP is strategic to be able to adapt to environmental changes and whatever may come along. It must be flexible. A good Strategic Information System Plan (SISP) have addresses both the external and internal factors that affects an organization and be able to find and provide a solution to it. In our class discussion, when we said internal factors that affects an organization these are the things that the organization itself have a control. In Strength Weaknesses Opportunities Threats analysis (SWOT), we consider the Strengths and Weaknesses that transpires with in the organization are the factors that can be improve. Most companies tend to hide their weaknesses which is not good, it is important for a company to recognize or determined their weaknesses for the improvements and to be able to fine the specific and appropriate solutions for every problems. Acceptance to ones weaknesses is the first step to strengthen this. On the other hand, the external factors are the Opportunities and Threats. We know that in every opportunities are to be consider as threats also. These are happens outside your organization.

Before I discuss the nature of the relationship between the business plan and the Information System plan, please allow me first to give the definition of the two involved phrases. First is the business plan. According to Wikipedia, 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. A business plan can be profitable or non-profitable. A business plans that aims for a profitable business is more focus and their goals are further gives attention to the financial side. Profitable business plan is the usual kind of a business that the intention is focus in having an income from their capital. I think this type of business plan is much more needed for the people that are business minded and wants to earn cash. Non-profitable business plans are usually the public service or the government which their goal is not centers the income of the business but their goals is more focus in giving services to the people. As how I understand, I think non-profitable business plan is also a pleasant plan that tends to help the people around their society. Business plans also consists if target changes in target changes in perception and branding by the customer, client, tax-payer, or larger community. A business plan having changes in perception and branding as its primary goals is called a marketing plan. 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. 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 core card 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.

Enough with the definition of a business plan let me now define the next term/phrase which is the Information Systems Plan which can be also referred to as the Strategic Information Systems Planning. Strategic information systems planning (SISP) has been defined as the process of identifying a portfolio of computer-based applications that will assist an organization in executing its business plans and realizing its business goals. SISP is an important activity for helping information executives and top management identify strategic applications and align IT with business needs. SISP is the analysis of a corporation’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 the strategic direction of the company (Battaglia, 1991).

With the definition for the two terms given above I think that the nature of relationship between the business plan and the IS plan is that the Information systems plan is used to identify the best targets for purchasing and installing new management information systems and help an organization maximize the return on its information technology investment. Planning for information systems, as for any other system, begins with the identification of needs. In order to be effective, development of any type of computer-based system should be a response to need--whether at the transaction processing level or at the more complex information and support systems levels. Such planning for information systems is much like strategic planning in management. Objectives, priorities, and authorization for information systems projects need to be formalized. The systems development plan should identify specific projects slated for the future, priorities for each project and for resources, general procedures, and constraints for each application area. The plan must be specific enough to enable understanding of each application and to know where it stands in the order of development. A portfolio of computer-based applications is identified that will assist an organization in executing its business plans and realize its business goals. There is a growing realization that the application of information technology (IT) to a firm’s strategic activities has been one of the most common and effective ways to improve business performance.

References:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_plan
http://viu.eng.rpi.edu/publications/strpaper.pdf
http://www.jmis-web.org/articles/v13_n1_p35/index.html

Subject: Re: Assignment 2 (Due: before November 29, 2009, 13:00hrs)

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