Strategic IT Planning: Achieving Organizational Success with Information Systems

Strategic IT Planning in Organizations

The Information System (IS) within an organization can lead to both success and failure.

Defining Strategic Information Planning

Strategic Information Planning is the process of studying, analyzing, and deciding on the best strategies for the incorporation and use of Information Systems (IS) and Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in an organization.

This planning process must be strategic, deciding on optimal strategies that adequately support the organization, considering the external environment, supporting the development of organizational strategies, and fostering competence to fulfill organizational missions.

Key Components of Computing Strategies

The Strategic IT Plan must consider the following architectural components:

• Information Architecture: Collecting, storing, and distributing information.
• IS Architecture: The portfolio of applications.
• ICT Architecture Base: Capabilities of hardware (HW), software (SW), and networks.

The plan identifies IT strategies across these three architectural areas.

Analyzing Organizational Processes

Ideally, the analysis of organizational processes should be the first step in IT planning. Factors that should be taken into account include:

• Formal systems of the organization.
• General objectives and information needs within the organization, both internally and for its relationship with the environment.
• Current business processes and alternatives.

The IT Planning Process Steps

Organizational Analysis

Provides information on current business processes and their needs or opportunities for improvement, redesigns, innovations, and electronic media.

Environmental Scan

Provides information on the external environment of the organization, its current status and trends, and the needs or opportunities related to supply value chains, customers, and relationships with other organizations.

Market Analysis of ICT and IS

Delivers information on current and emerging technologies that could offer new opportunities for improvements, changes, and innovations for the organization.

Strategic IT Vision

Refers to the analysis of competitive advantage for the organization that ICT can help achieve.

Critical Success Factors (CSFs)

A Critical Success Factor (CSF) is a factor deemed essential to business success.

Customer Life Cycle Analysis

This involves analyzing the relationship between organizations and their customers (the customer value chain) and studying how the use of ICT can enhance this relationship. An information system is strategic to the extent that it supports the customer life cycle.

Developing the Strategic IT Plan

The Strategic IT Plan focuses not on the details of installed equipment or software, but on how IT is used and its effectiveness, independent of technical implementation. Key considerations include:

• Organizational structure and budget allocation mechanisms.
• Integrated data models and processes.
• Portfolio of new projects.
• Portfolio of systems to be maintained.
• Portfolio of operations and technology services.

The IT Operational Plan

The IT Operational Plan relates the activities to be undertaken with specific objectives, resources, and budgets.