The Nature of the Relationship of Business and IS Plan
Since we are talking about business plan and IS plan here, let us dig deeper the significance of planning in view of the nature of the relationship of each organizational plan and IT plan. To have a better perspective on this matter, I would like to show you some important aspects I have gathered through my researches about business planning.
Planning is something fundamental to anybody or any organization as it is a preparatory measure of some things that need to be done. As plan defines by Encarta, plan works as a system for achieving objective. Consequently, it is a method of doing something that is worked out in advance. clearly stated that it is a method of doing something that is worked out in advance. The way things are arranged or just an outline of items to be included in certain tasks.
In any organization, planning is the most important tool in achieving its objectives and purposes. To earn success, people should have an effective business plan to be carried out. Business planning encompasses all the goals, strategies and actions that an organization envision to ensure the business’s survival and growth. It is an incredibly effective way for individuals to focus on achieving the goals of the organization(Susan Ward).Basically, any form of business and/or establishments has business plans that set out its future strategies and financial development.
Huge, isn’t it? For convenience, let’s think of business planning as being broken into two large sections; 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 business planning exercise but a living document that needs to be updated throughout the lifecycle of any business. Once the business has officially started, profit-making business planning will center on setting and meeting goals and targets.
In establishing and managing the affair of state on any businesses, 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 going to be a great help for him in governing 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. As 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 supply a basis for measuring the results and progress of the business development. The key important thing is to make the organization move into a systematic and orderly way.
Because planning serves as way of proceeding 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 company and organize work. And with the fast-evolving changes in our environment in the presents state of life, plans should likewise be made every now and then a very flexible one that could possibly handle the rapid alteration and transformations of various company programs and objectives intended for longer term plans.
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. Moreover, planning is an important factor to be considered by most of the leaders of an organization since this will assist them in making some of the strategies that will aid in defining ways to administer changes occurred from the internal and external factors in the community.
In most cases, those of higher positions like the Chief Executive Officers are the usual persons who creates and initiates the planning for 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. But some organizations have these certain offices and divisions which take charge with the business planning strategies. But in common cases, planning are done primarily by the administrative division.
Having realized the competence brought by technology to the corporate world, information technology has long been integrated into the core of every business through managing and supporting its business operations. The information system department will going to be the organization’s most important areas. Information System people are treated as the most critical resources of the company. They can either help the company progress or be a failure to the organization. Thus, it is then very crucial for the company to take high attention on the center of the organization which holds its vital information. Since, information is a very significant data any organization has. The purpose and use of information systems in the beginning, 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 processes. In this side of the story, IT planning is somehow align with the Information Systems planning.
IT planning is the organized planning of IT infrastructure done at various levels of the organization. The topic of IT planning is very important for both planners and end users: End-users often do IT planning for their own units, and they also frequently participate in the corporate IT planning. This in turn determines what applications end users can deploy. Thus the future of every unit in the organization could be impacted by the IT infrastructure. These plans would help organizations to reach their business goals and to create competitive advantage.
For this reason, all of the plans of the organization should include not only the outside part of the business components of the company but also the internal structure of the organization as well as the factors comprising the Information Systems. The information systems uses technology to serve the organization in a more better view, the society where it is classified, to perform its mission and vision, to boost the economy and to achieve its goals and objectives through propelling business. Any organization could have a lot of reasons for keeping alive the information systems of the company. As we all know, every organization is 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. Information Systems consists of the hardware, software and the people ware where any of the organization have. All of these basically support each other in order for the Information Systems aligned with the business processes.
If we are going to specifically look over the components of Information Systems, we could easily see the significance of each element towards each other. Moreover, in most business processes, there are lot of proprietary and open source software being introduced and used by companies that could further enhance the processing of information. Software that are especially made particularly for the certain tasks and programs for a company specialization. Naturally, software elements would not run without the hardware components. All the hardware components of the company are necessary tools for every individual who were using the resources essential for the transactions and business operations of an organization. Indeed, these hardware components are invested by the company to help them in processing large amount of data and will aid in producing more accurate and better outputs with less effort on the labor. Nevertheless, Information Systems would never be completed without the most important ingredient - the people ware or the human resources of the organization. Without them, the hardware and software specifications of any company will become useless for the fact that there will be no person in charge in operating these components for the business operations. The human resources, or the workforce as we kept on saying is the most critical resource of the organization. And as with the information system is concern, 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.
Since we already mentioned that the information system involves many procedures and functions, it is likely important to engross the organization with Information System Plan or the so-called IS Plan. This is where the classifying, processing, managing, and controlling of the data inputs to yield the necessary output of the business operations. In most companies, it is in the Information Systems department where able to carry out the mission and vision of the company as a whole, and later on each and every subdivisions of it should align with the business strategy. This is where the business plan and information systems plan naturally align. Where all the core processes of the company, or the business plan always inclined with their IS Plan.
The nature of relationship between the business plan and the information systems plan is basically relative to business and Information Technology. Usually, the information system is aligned with the business plans of the organization. Let’s take the Davao Light and Power Company Information System Department as an example: in every suggestions or proposal they have to made for a new system or programs, they would always take the side of the top management who were the business owners. They are not in the right place to easily decide for the company. Thus, with the signal of the higher rank people, that would be the time where they can eventually proceed to their plan. With this the information systems plan always relates to the business plan of any company. 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. The IT people will be the support group for any operations that needed to be prepare.
Also, because of the technological advance brought by the rapid changes of our generation, the business strategies of the owners were being affected and need to be taken care of. The top management should also look up to how these new trends of technologies will provide betterment for the organization as a whole. Apart from that concerns the company should also consider on how to acquire and manage the firm’s hardware and software assets, and other mediating factors affecting the information technology and the organization. Without intensive business plan and integrated Information System plan, the programs and systems being develop would not be possibly directly implemented and gain beneficial results for the business. The kinds of information systems like the operational, management, and strategic level serves the groups of operational managers, data workers, middle and senior managers. As we can see, these people are also the same persons setting out the company’s vision, mission, goals, and objectives.
In overall reflection, I can say that the continuous use of information technology in business strategies will help achieve competitive advantage of the organization in the society. This is because Information Systems enlightens any organizations in taking responsibility together and sharing the knowledge across business divisions and improving competency towards global marketplace. Information systems aid in automating the manual parts of the businesses, giving efficient and accurate results in processing information. When the manual system adopt threats to security and reliability of the information due to data redundancy, the computerized system can speed up, and give 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.
These made me realized that both the business plan and IS plan are always been correlated to each other. Because as business strategies being outputted to business plan carry out the outside level of the company while IS plan is concerned with the information system and the company’s core issues.
http://managementhelp.org/plan_dec/bus_plan/bus_plan.htm
http://www.investorwords.com/630/business_plan.html
Feurer, R., et al., “Aligning Strategies, Processes, and IT:
http://www.acf.hhs.gov/nhsitrc/it_planning/index.html
0 comments:
Post a Comment