CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS
OF INFORMATION SYSTEM
PLANNING FOR SYSTEM
DEVELOPMENT
Farahwahida Mohd1 (UNISEL)
Raja Haslinda Raja Mohd Ali2 (UUM)
Suhizaz Sudin3 (UNIMAP)
CONTENT
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ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION
VARIOUS ROLES OF SISP
ADVANTAGES OF ISP
SISP THEORY
SISP CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS
THE IMPORTANCE TO INTEGRATE CULTURE IN THE
CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS MODELS
ABSTRACT
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Information system planning has been one of the critical issues in an
organization. Besides assisting the organization to achieve its objective,
information system planning has been used by organization to identify its
higher payback towards implementing it.
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In achieving this, organizations should clearly understand the factors that
critically importance in the system development for their organizations.
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As a result from the above, we propose this paper to discuss the critical
success factors that have been found in the literature to be significantly
related to the system development in an organization.
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These factors include skills, cooperation from other departments, financial
investment evaluation, human resources, facilities, IT infrasturucture, IT
organizational structure, top management support and management
commitment.
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The paper has been organized as follows. First section will discuss on the
various definition of information system planning by few scholars. Then,
the theory of information system planning will be introduced. The third
section will discuss on the benefits of IS planning.
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Next, we will discuss the factors that have been found to be critically
importance in the information system planning for system development.
Lastly, we will conclude this paper by discussing the possibility of
integrating the culture in the information system planning for system
development as many organizations has embraced internationalization.
INTRODUCTION
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Strategic Information System Planning (SISP) is one of the important
management agenda. It helps organization in various ways.
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It assists the organization to identify the appropriate technology that
should be acquired, it also helps the organization to use its technology
competitively as well as help the organization to identify its higher
payback when investing towards the technology.
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Lederer and Sethi (1988) have defined SISP as a process where an
organization determines a portfolio of computer-based applications to
help achieve business objectives.
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It is essential for organisations since the measurement of organisations’
success is based on the money invested in information processing
(Remenyi, Money & Twite, 1991).
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Realizing the importance of SISP, researchers have proposed several
models for the successful implementation of SISP (e.g. King, 1978;
Lederer & Sethi, 1988; Earl, 1993; Smits & Poel, 1996; Lederer &
Salmela, 1996).
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These studies also reveal several motivating and inhibiting factors that
contribute to the successful implementation of SISP in business
organisations, as well as benefits and problems facing ISP implementation
(e.g. Lederer & Sethi, 1988; Doherty, Marples & Suhaimi, 1999; Hackney,
2002).
VARIOUS
ROLES OF
SISP
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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. (Lederer and Sethi,
1988). In many organizations, it includes the specification of databases
and systems to support those applications.
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Also, it might embrace the selection of applications, from an existing list
of possibilities that would best fill the organisation’s current and future
needs (Carlson, 1979; Kerner, 1979).
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Other scholars have suggested that it might also entail the discovery of
new applications with the potential to create an advantage over
competitors (Parsons, 1983; Ives and Learmonth, 1984; McFarlan, 1984;
Porter, 1985; Porter and Millar, 1985; Clemons, 1986; Boynton and Zmud,
1987).
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We define the SISP as a process that helps the organization to achieve
their business mission and objectives via the organization resources which
include financial, time and human resources.
ADVANTAGES
OF
ISP
1.
It can identify the most desirable information systems applications in
which to invest. (Henderson and Sifonis, 1988).
2.
It could help an organization use its information systems to carry out its
existing business strategies (Hartog and Herbert, 1989).
3.
It helps the organization to define new business strategies, technology
policies, and architectures (Earl, 1993; Porter 1985).
4.
It help the organizations to align its information systems strategy with
its business strategy (King, 1988).
5.
Various IS planning methodologies can help an organization discover
opportunities where IS can support important business requirements.
(Dologite, Fang, Chen, Mockler & Chao, 1998).
SISP THEORY
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Theory of strategic planning has been developed by Lederer and Salmela
in the year 1996.
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In the year 1978, King has proposed the strategic planning of
Management Information System (MIS) which include the organizational
strategy set and MIS strategy set.
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Fitzgerald (1993) criticized that the dependencies in the King’s model are
not validated, and instruments to measure the constructs in the model
are vaguely described. Based on the criticism, Smits and Poel (1996)
proposed a more descriptive model to describe strategic ISP which
includes environment, process, form and content and effects.
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Since both models did not detailed on how implementation should take in
action, Earl’s model (1993) can be used to explain further the necessary
conditions for successful strategic ISP.
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In 1996, Lederer and Salmela proposed a theory of strategic information
system planning to stimulate research and assist practice of SISP.
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The theory of SISP consists of seven constructs, which are
◦ (1) the external environment,
◦ (2) the internal environment,
◦ (3) planning resources,
◦ (4) the planning process,
◦ (5) the information plan,
◦ (6) the implementation of the information plan,
◦ (7)the alignment of the information plan with the organization’s
business plan.
SISP CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS
Skills
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The success of an organization depends on many factors and one of it is
the human factors. In order to make sure that the organization can
increased their competitiveness in regards to competitive environment,
skills worker or employee is needed.
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Papalexandris & Nikandrou (2000) in their study found out that there are
four main categories of skills that is demand by the organizations which
are technical skills, human skills and conceptual skills and one of the skills
included in the technical area is project planning.
Cooperation from other departments
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For some organization, the information system planning is prepared for
the department which the information system would like to be
implemented.
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Therefore, in order to make sure that the information system could
benefit to the other users in that organization, it should get a full
cooperation from other departments in that organization so that the
particular departments could know the process of other departments.
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Titthasiri (2000), in her study shows that representatives from all
constituencies are important to prioritize the IT/IS objectives
Financial Investment evaluation
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In order to success in information system planning, an investment
towards the information system technology should be made same as the
investment towards other assets such as building, machinery, equipment
and others where it should be evaluated based on the priorities.
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Lincoln and Shorrock (1990) found that many successful strategic IS
projects had bypassed the normal justification process used in the
organization.
Human Resource
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Allocation of human resource in information system planning process
should be made to make sure that it is not underestimated.
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Underestimate of this resource could lead the organization to miss their
target dates and budgets (Lederer & Gardiner, 1992).
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Thus, the assertion is the better human resource allocation in preparing
IS planning, the more likely to success in information system planning.
IT Infrastructure
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In order to make sure that the implementation of the information system
planning is a success, it is therefore much crucial to prepare all the
infrastructures needed in implementing the plan.
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Without the infrastructure, the plan will remain a plan. In this article, we
assume that the better the IT organizational infrastructure of the
organization, the most likely to success in information system planning.
Facilities
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The facilities are also one of the important contents that should be
considered in the SISP process.
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According to Titthasiri (2000), in a process of IS planning, facilities
strategy should be made available such as allocations of the locations,
buildings, rooms, security and furniture.
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Therefore, the other hypothesis is the better facilities of the organization
to support the ISP, the more likely to success in information system
planning.
IT Organizational Structure
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IT organizational structure is also an important content in SISP process.
According to Titthasiri (2000), organizational structure is important to
answer a question on what IT structure to be organized, how to
developed policies and procedures, how to organized the IT planning
team, and how many should be included in a team and others.
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With the above statement, we assert that the better the IT organizational
structure of the organization, the more likely to success in information
system planning.
External Environment
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The external environment such as changes in supplier trends, customer
preferences,
emerging
technology,
government
legislation
and
competitors’ actions may influence strategic information system planning
by making it more difficult ( Lederer and Mendelow, 1990; Ragunathan
and Ragunathan, 1991).
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The hypotheses that can be derived from the above statement is the
better analysis on the external environment the more likely to success in
information system planning.
Top management support
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Basis for SISP are the business goals, which fall within the scope of top
management. Besides, SISP, is very expensive and has far-stretching
consequences for the organization (strategic impact, all kinds of business
functions are involved).
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For successful SISP, it is necessary to have the support of the top
management (Galliers, 1992). Fail to get support from top management
will leads to fail of SISP. Therefore, our last hypothesis is the better the
top management support, the more likely to success in information
system planning.
From the above discussion, we proposed the SISP critical
success factors model as in figure 1 below.
Cooperation from other department
Financial Investment Evaluation
Human Resources
IT Infrastructure
SISP success
Facilities
Top management support
IT Organizational structure
External environment
Figure 1: SISP Critical Success Factors Model
THE IMPORTANCE TO INTEGRATE
CULTURE IN THE CRITICAL SUCCESS
FACTORS MODELS
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Another issue that could be raised in this modern era that is related to the
SISP is the integration of culture.
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As has been known widely that organizations today have embraced
internationalization, therefore it is a need to understand the culture which
is not similar to the parent organization culture to ensure that the
organizations still could benefit from the SISP.
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The importance to integrate culture in the critical success factors model
could be seen from different perspectives. There are still few studies that
have been done regarding the impact of culture in the SISP even though
there are many researchers studied on the comparison of IS planning
between countries.
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For example, Groznik and Kovacic (2000) conducted a research on
exploratory study comparing IS planning implementation between
Singapore and Slovenia.. Later, Mohdzain and Ward (2007) studied on the
subsidiaries’ views towards the information systems strategic planning of
the multinational organizations.
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Realizing this, it is worth for organizations to consider a cross-cultural
issues since some of these organizations have started operating at other
countries.
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According to Hunter and Beck (2000), a process that has been developed
at one location might not survive at other location. So, this globalization
issues suggests that more cross-cultural research should be conducted
since it does not only benefit to the researchers but also valuable to the
practical implications.
Thank You