What is Strategic Planing?

» Features of Strategic Planning
» Purpose of Strategic Planning
» The Advantages of Strategic Management
» Analysis of Organizational Information Requirements
» Define and Evaluate Information Requirements for Organizational Subsystem
» Limitation of Management Information System
» Development and Implementation of Managerial Information System
» Implementation of Managerial Information System

Features of Strategic Planning

1. They are proactive and non re-active.

2. They are internal in source, and the business venture has absolute control over their application.

3. Strategy can apply once after that it is process of application with no unique element remaining.

4. The outcome is normally a strategic planning which is used guidance to define functional and divisional plan including technology, marketing etc.

5. Strategic planning is the formal consideration of an organization’s future course. All strategic planning deals with al least one of three keys question

a) What do we do?
b) For whom do we do it?
c) How do we excel?

In business strategic planning the third question is better 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 extended their vision to 20 years.

Purpose of Strategic Planning

1. Clearly define the purpose of the organization and establish realistic goal and objectives consistent with that mission in a defined time frame within the organization’s capacity for implementation.

2. Communicate those goals and objectives to the organization constituents.

3. Develop a sense of ownership of the plan.

4. Ensure the most effective use in made of the organization resources by focusing the resources on the key priorities.

5. Provide a base from which progress can be measured and establish a mechanism for informed change when needed.

6. Bring together everyone’s best and most reasoned efforts to have important value in building a consensus about where an organization is going.

7. Provide cleaner focus of organization producing more efficiency and effectiveness.

8. Bridges staff and board of directors in the case of corporation.

9. Builds strong teams in the board and the staff in the case of corporation.

10. Provides the glue that keeps the board together in case of corporation.

11. Produce great satisfaction among planners around a common vision.

12. Increase productivity from increased efficiency and effectiveness.

13. Solves major problems arising in the business.

The Advantages of Strategic Management

Discharge board responsibility - the first reason that most organization state for having a strategic management process is that it discharges the responsibility of the board of director’s.

Facilitate an objective assessment - Strategic planning provide a discipline that enables the board and senior management to actually take a step back from the day to day business to think about the future of the organization without this discipline the organization can become solely consumed with working through the next issue or problem without consideration of the larger picture.

Provide a framework for decision making - Strategy provide a framework within which all staff can make day to day operational decisions and understand that those decision are all moving the organization in a single direction it is not possible nor realistic or appropriate for the board to know all the decision the executive director will have to make nor it is possible nor realistic or practical for the executive director to know all the decision the staff will make. Strategy provides a vision of the future confirm the purpose and values of an organization, sets objectives, clarify threats and opportunity determines methods to leverage strengths, and mitigate weaknesses at a minimum. As such it sets a framework and clear boundaries within which decision can be made.

Support understanding and buy-in - Allowing the board and staff participation in the strategic discussion enables them to better understand the direction why that direction was chosen, and the associated benefits. Fore some people simply knowing is enough for many people to gain their full support requires them to understand.

Enables measurement of progress - A strategic management process forces an organization to set the objectives and measures of success the setting of measures of success requires that the organization first determine what is critical to its ongoing success and then forces the establishment of objectives and keeps these critical measures in front of the board and senior management.

Provides an organizational perspective - Addressing operational issues rarely looks at the whole organization and the interrelatedness of its varying components. Strategic management takes an organizational perspective and look at all the components and the interrelationship between those components in order to develop a strategy that is optimal for the whole organization and not a single component.

Analysis of Organizational Information Requirements

Information requirements are the prerequisites in an organization for information system, planning identifies application and planning an information architecture. More detailed information requirement are required for design of application. Although the level of specification is different for the organization and applications many of the methods for obtaining requirements are the same.

The method is a synthesis of several existing approaches. In this method obtaining organizational information requirements consists of several steps.

Define underlying organizational subsystem
The first phase of analysis is to define underlying organization subsystem. The purpose of activity subsystem identification is to subdivide requirement determination by major organization activity and make the process more manageable. For the home leasing company, the major subsystem are:

- Credit
- Leasing
- Maintenance
- Eviction and delinquency
- Marketing
- Advertising
- Accounts receivable and collection
- Corporate accounting
- Market and product analysis
- Client reporting
- Appraisal
- Insurance
- Sales
- Personnel
- Inspection
- Audit
- Inventory
- Legal

These subsystems are obtained by an interactive process of discussing all organization activities with managers and defining the activity as belonging to broad categories of subsystem. As new activities are considered, they are placed in previously defined categories or a new category is created.

Develop subsystem manager matrix
Once the underlying organizational subsystems are defined the next step of the organizational subsystem.
The matrix is prepared by reviewing the major decision making responsibility of each middle top level manager and association decision making with specific subsystem. The purpose of this step is to clarify responsibilities and identify those managers to be interviewed relative to each subsystem.

Define and Evaluate Information Requirements for Organizational Subsystem

This step obtains the information requirements of each organizational subsystem by group interview of those managers having major decision making responsibility for the subsystem merely asking managers to define their information requirements is frequently not satisfactory because of the limitation on humans as information processor.

- what problem do you have and what information is needed for solving them?

- what decision do you make and what information do you need for decision making?

- what factors are critical to the success of your activity and what information do you need to achieve success in them or monitor progress?

- what resources are used in producing the end what information is needed to measure efficiency in use of the resources.

Statement of purpose - the first step of the interview is to get the managers to define a statement of purpose for the subsystem under consideration for example, the purpose of maintenance was defined as maintain rental property at satisfactory level with minimal cost and process vendor payments.

Subsystem mapping - the step of the group interview is to define the relationship of the subsystem to all other subsystem internal to the organization or entities external to the organization. It is constructed by drawing subsystem under consideration in the center of a chalkboard or flip chart pad and by drawing around it the subsystem and entities with which it interacts.

Question to elicit requirements - after the subsystem mapping is complete, information requirements are elicited using the three set of question

Define major information categories and classify information requirements :

Develop information subsystem matrix - The information categories are used to create a matrix showing which subsystem use an information category. Rough measures of importance and current availability are specified . the matrix is used to define and information architecture for categories of information.

Resource requirements - the business requirements which define the high level customer objectives and vision for the system, are used to determine the scope of the system. When capturing the business requirements, it is essential that the project team look at all aspects of the system, including

Functional Requirements - Describing processes and tasks that the consumer must be able to accomplish through the use of the system. These can typically be categorized as process that require action an the part of consumer data entry selection of a system command etc, and those that are not directly related to human interaction with the system for example off hours processing or the automated exchange of information between systems.

Technical Requirements - Identifying technical aspects and constrains that must be considered when defining the new system. Consideration may include accessibility needs of consumers whether or not the storage and many factors may impact your choice of approach to follow them developing a system.

Operational Requirements - Specifying may administrative constraints or expectation that must be supported by the system in a production environment may include the system performance expectation, technical infrastructure constraints, security mechanism that must be followed the need to regularly achieve data, and many mandated audit and control process.

Transitional Requirements - defining the realm of condition that must be satisfied prior to physically implemented the system in a production environment or to relegating support responsibilities to the performing organization. Data conversion requirements and development and delivery of consumer training programs and materials fall into this category.

Limitation of Management Information System

Although the management information system is becoming interestingly beneficial some cases even essential to the management of the organization that very thing that makes it so attractive has also made it difficult to design and implement. These system are expensive both in term of people needed to develop them and in term of computer hardware to support them, unfortunately they also have had a tendency to cost more and require more time than estimated. The system become rapidly obsolete with changing management objective, competitive environment and technological advances it can be difficult and expensive once they installed. A major system can have disastrous effect on the organization man and machine, which are not always compatible combination.

Development and Implementation of Managerial Information System

Managerial information system is an efficient tool of acquisition of real time information on company’s internal process with the option of statistical processing generating reports for evaluation and decision making correct interpretation of these results is important for management to the same extent as correctness of collected data analysis and presentation available for purpose of decision taking process. This system represents upgrade to system existing in society which integrated. Corporate information sources at required quality level and sufficiently detailed.

In conclusion, our management information system solutions provide:

- Simple and fast access to data of various sources both internal and external without data amount limitation.

- Running of pre processed reports and generation of ad-hoc queries.

- Data analysis from various aspects and e.g time comparison of data product structure analysis.

- Broad range of analysis and calculation function allowing to analyze trends, compare different time periods identify critical situations transfer information into applications etc.

System Development Life Cycle

The material in this section is organized according to a generic system development life cycle. While no two development efforts are exactly alike, all projects should progress through the same six phases.

1. System initiation- in which the business case and proposed solution developed during project origination are re-examined to ensure that they are still appropriately defined and address an existing organizational need. This validation efforts provides the project team the basis for a detailed schedule defining the step needed to obtain a through understanding of the business requirement and an initial view of staffing needs. In addition a high level schedule is developed for subsequent system development lifecycle phases.

2. System requirements analysis- in which the needs of the business are captured in as much detailed the project manager leads the project team in working with the customers to define what it is that the new system must do. By obtaining a detailed and comprehensive understanding of the business requirements the project team can develop the functional specification that will drive the system design.

3. System design- which builds upon the work performed during system requirements analysis and result in a translation of the functional requirements into a complete technical solution. This solution dictates the technical architecture, standards, specification and strategies to be followed. Throughout the building, testing, and implementation of the system the completion of system design also marks the point in the project at which the project manager should be able to plan in detailed all future project phases.

4. System construction- throughout which the project team builds and tests various modules of the application including any utilities that will be needed during system acceptance and system implementation as system components are built they will be tested both individually and in logically related and integrated grouping until such time as a full system test has been performed to validate functionally. Documentation and training materials are also developed during this phase.

5. System acceptance- during which the focus of system validation efforts shifts from those team members responsible for developing the application to those who will be ultimately use the system in the execution of their daily responsibilities. In addition to confirming that the system meets functional expectation, activities are aimed at validating all aspects of data conversion and system deployment.

6. System implementation- the final phase of the life cycle which comprises all activities associated with the deployment of the application. These efforts include training, installation of the system in a production setting and transition of ownership of the application from the project team to the performing organization.

Implementation of Managerial Information System

The implementation of information technology is a complex task and needs a detailed and careful planning for successful implementation. A long range management information system plan provides direction for the development of the system and provides a basic for achieving the specific targets or tasks against a time frame.

1. Environmental modeling center - the environmental modeling centre improves numerical weather, marine and climate predictions at the national centre for environment prediction through a broad program of research in data assimilation and modeling in support of the NCEP develops improves and monitors data assimilation systems and models of the photosphere atmosphere ocean and coupled system using advance methods developed internally as well as cooperatively with scientists from universities national laboratories and other government agencies and the international scientific community.

2. Enterprise information system - an enterprise information system is generally a kind of computing system that is of enterprise class this means typically offering high quality of service dealing with large volumes of data and capable of supporting some large organization an enterprise.

3. Informs - the institute for operational research and the management science INFORMS is an international society for practitioners in the field of operations research and management science. It was established in 1995. According to INFORMS constitution the institute’s purpose is to improve operational processes decision –making and management by individual and organization through operational research the management science and related scientific methods.

4. Information processing system - an information processing system is made up of four basic parts, or sub-system.

- input
- processor
- storage
- output

First, information in the form of gravitational force from the earth serves as input to the system we call a rock. At a particular instant the rock is a specific distance from the surface of the earth traveling at that instant only may be considered stored in the rock.

5. Development of managerial information system - management information system is based on an author co-citation analysis. The resulting mapping is intended to serve as a bench mark for future assessment of management information system as a field as well as a means for documenting the emergency of new research specialties. The study sought to identify.

6. System/information engineering and modeling - as a software is always of a large system or business work begun by establishing the requirements for all system elements and then allocating some subset of these requirements to software. This system view is essential when the software must interface with other elements such as hardware, people and other resources.

7. Software requirement analysis - the process is also known as feasibility study in this phase the development team visits the customer and studies their system. They investigate the needs for possible software automation in the given system by the end of feasibility study, the team furnishes a document that holds the different specific recommendation for the candidate system. It also includes the personnel assignment, costs, project schedule, target dates etc.

8. System analysis and design - in this phase the software development process, the software’s overall structure and its nuances are defined in terms of the client/server technology, the number of tiers needed for the package architecture the data base design the data structure design etc.

9. Code generation - the design must be translated into a machine readable form. The code generation step performs this task. If the design is performed in a detailed manner, code generation can be accomplished without much complication. Programming tools like compliers, interpreters, debuggers etc.

10. Testing - once the code is generated, the software program testing begins. Different testing methodologies are available to unravel the bugs that were committed during the previous phase. Deferent testing tools and methodologies are already available. Some companies build their own testing tools that are tailor made for their own development operations.

11. Maintenance - the software will definitely undergo change once it is delivered to the customer. There can be many reasons for this change to occur. Change could happen because of some unexpected input values into the system.

Prototyping Model

This is a cycle version of the linear model. Once the requirement analysis is done and the design for a prototype is made the development process gets started. Once the prototype is created, it is given to the customer for evaluation. The customers test the package and given his/her feedback to the developer who refines the product according to the customer’s exact expectation. After a finite number of iteration, the final software package is given to the customer in the methodology; the software is evolved as a result of periodic shuttling of information between the customer and developer. This is the most popular development model in the contemporary IT industry.

Rapid Application Development Model

The RAD model is a linear sequential software development process that emphasizes an extremely short development cycle. The RAD model is a high speed adaptation of the linear sequential model in which rapid development is achieved by using a component based construction approach. Used primarily for information system application the RAD approach encompasses the following phases.

1. Business modeling - The information flow among business functions is modeled in a way that answer following question.

-what information drives the business process?
-what information is generated?
-who generate it?
-where does the information go?
-who processes it?

2. Data modeling - The information flow defined as a part of the modeling phase is refined into a set of data objects that are needed to support the business. The characteristic called attribute of each object is identified and the relationships between these objects are defined.

3. Process modeling - The data objects defined in the data modeling phase are transformed to achieve the information flow necessary to implement a business faction. Processing the description is created for adding, modifying deleting or retrieving a data object.

4. Application Generation - The RAD model assumes the use of the RAD tools like VB, VC++, and Delphi etc... rather than creating software using conventional third generation programming languages. The RAD model works to reuse existing program components (when possible) or create reusable components (when necessary). In all cases, automated tools are used to facilitate construction of the software.

5. Testing and Turnover - Since the RAD process emphasizes reuse, many of the program components have already been tested. This minimizes the testing and development time.