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Strategic Analysis and
Selection of Information
Systems
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Edgar Donovan
Touro University International
ITM 501
Dr. William N. Kaghan
Module 4 – Session Long Project
Monday, March 7, 2005
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Strategic Analysis and Selection of
Information Systems
The 1990’s witnessed a boom of companies specializing in consultancy services
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that went beyond business strategic analysis to include the selection, development,
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deployment, and operation of information technology processes. The third party
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consultancy model has been successful throughout the twentieth century in industries
such as accounting, auditing, business strategy, marketing, and advertising. Today it
is relied upon by prestigious “Big Five” consulting firms and smaller companies alike
to provide a myriad of IT related development and support services.
In terms of business strategy, IT strategy, and IT deployment/support
methodologies are concerned, they are as varied as the number of consultancies
present in the market. Therefore, it is practically impossible to define a unique
business strategy and follow-up IT strategy that will be universally accepted by all
players in any given industry. Knowing that most consultancies prefer to focus on
delivering services as close to the expertise of their personnel as possible, it is
reasonable to expect that regardless of how non committed to a particular technology
vendor a consultancy is or how much they promise they will adapt the solutions to fit
your needs and not vice-versa their methodology will always be seen through the
culture of their strongest core competencies. Some of the differing core competencies
may be business strategy, vendor selection, vendor management, systems
programming, systems maintenance, training, installation, support, project
management, personnel management, etc.
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Ex. 1 – Coherent Strategy (CartoonStock.com)
Regardless of methodology diversity in the marketplace, for purposes of this
discussion I will separate the thinking process that is induced when a group of people
come together to attempt to achieve commercial goals into two camps: business
strategy formulation and information technology strategy formulation.
I believe that the following are very useful questions that should constitute part
of the analysis process when discussing business strategy formulation:
1. Do we properly understand our company's market position, resources, and
key leverage points?
2. In what new markets or existing markets can we profitably increase market
share or mind share?
3. Once we have isolated the proper markets, can we construct a detailed
customer profile?
4. Once that is done, can we interview potential users to understand their
expectations and priorities so that we can begin developing appropriate
product/service design parameters?
5. If expectations seem reasonable, can we gain build a durable competitive
advantage through the deployment of a properly managed IT infrastructure
that will help us to cost effectively market, sell, and maintain our product or
service?
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6. If so, do we have the financial, time, and talent resources to be devoted
towards accomplishing this goal?
7. If not, do we have the means to acquire missing resources?
8. If yes, are there any precedents that can help us estimate risk?
9. Once we have accurately determined it are we willing to incur the risk
involved?
10. How can we best create an IT development?
I believe that the following are very useful questions that constitute part of the
analysis process when discussing information technology strategy formulation:
1. How well does the system we want to build adhere to current and future
strategic requirements?
2. Does the system need to interact with any current legacy systems and if so
how much middleware would need to be developed to get it to do so?
3. How much installation and training resources would be required to deploy
this new system?
4. What additional mission critical and non mission critical benefits would this
new technology platform provide during its run-up, operational, and future
life-cycle?
5. If we have one where does our currently operating system fail to meet our
needs?
6. What are the costs to do what we want done?
7. Do the benefits of the system we want to build outweigh the costs?
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Ex. 2 – Web Commerce Puzzle (CartoonStock.com)
The following are firms that offer IT related consulting services. I have provided
brief descriptions regarding the nature of their services:
Edu-Tech International
This company seems to be the less technical of all the firms analyzed. They seem
to be more involved in the business and strategic side of things. A potential client
firm would probably use Edu-Tech’s service if they needed to outsource a business or
project manager role to help figure out what their IT needs were. Subsequently this
could evolve into an external vendor/application service provider (ASP) manager
service. Alternatively, this service could be used to manage a small in-house IT staff
to operating a variety of IT processes.
Social Entrepreneurs, Inc.
This firm seems to specialize in delivering custom software and application
solutions in situations where no acceptable commercial product exists. This seems to
be either an ultra niche service that builds systems entirely from custom software (OS
included) or is just a redundant marketing pitch describing the creative development
and deployment of custom software applications to work between legacy systems and
proprietary products. Like may consultancies of this sort, they also offer training to
go along with their services.
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RsmMcGladrey
This firm seems mostly devoted to delivering software and application
programming solutions. The Microsoft Certified Logo on their web site tells us that
they are probably experienced in building solutions with or around a variety of
Microsoft technology platforms. This consultancy seems like a good match for any
firm with significant prior Microsoft technology platform system dependencies
requiring programming or implementation projects that go beyond the range of their
in-house staff.
Phoenix Health Systems
This firm seems to offer an Outsource-Your-MIS-Manager/Director service for
the healthcare industry. The main benefits of having this type of service would be
that you could run a small in-house IT staff with just a business or project manager.
Under that scenario, Phoenix Health Systems would ensure would run occasional
reports with the client firm to determine an IT hardware/software buying, installation,
and training schedule. They would then proceed to manage all the required vendor
relationships including volume pricing programs freeing up the business or project
manager to effectively run the IT staff.
Allman Horrocks Consulting
This firm seems to specialize in building solutions that reside on top of legacy
systems thus bridging together established core competencies with the network
application environment possible with web technologies. What is interesting about
this firm is that they try to pitch a methodology which is not committed to any
particular technology (Microsoft or UNIX, Java, SUN, etc.). They promise to analyze
the strengths and weaknesses of your current system and to build a solution from
there. They have probably adopted that approach because they have a significant
number of industry veteran people (10 years in the industry or more) who have
extensive business consulting and legacy systems management experience. That
would obviously be very positive for firms that fit the profiles described in their case
studies section of their web site. However, this attribute could go against them if they
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were to serve clients that needed business systems built entirely with new
technologies from scratch.
The companies above specializing in consultancy services go beyond business
strategic analysis to include the selection, development, deployment, and operation of
information technology processes. The third party consultancy model has been
successful throughout the twentieth century in industries such as accounting,
auditing, business strategy, marketing, and advertising. Today it is relied upon by
prestigious “Big Five” consulting firms and smaller companies alike to provide a
myriad of IT related development and support services.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
CartoonStock.com. Coherent Strategy. CartoonStock.com, 2005
CartoonStock.com. Web Commerce Puzzle. CartoonStock.com, 2005
Allman Horrocks Consulting. Information Systems. Ahc.co.uk, 2005
Phoenix Health Systems. Information Systems Procurement. PhoenixHealth.com, 2005
RsmMcGladrey. Information Systems Planning and Selection. Rsmmcgladrey.com, 2005
Social Entrepreneurs, Inc. Information Systems Selection and Implementation .
Socialent.com, 2005
Edu-Tech International Information System Planning and Selection. Edutech-int.com, 2005
II. Works Consulted
CartoonStock.com. Shopping During Class. CartoonStock.com, 2005
CartoonStock.com. Couch Potato. CartoonStock.com, 2005
Allman Horrocks Consulting. Information Systems. Ahc.co.uk, 2005
Phoenix Health Systems. Information Systems Procurement. PhoenixHealth.com, 2005
RsmMcGladrey. Information Systems Planning and Selection. Rsmmcgladrey.com, 2005
Social Entrepreneurs, Inc. Information Systems Selection and Implementation .
Socialent.com, 2005
Edu-Tech International Information System Planning and Selection. Edutech-int.com, 2005
Mineta, Norman. Falling Through the Net. U.S. Department of Commerce, 2000
BBC. Bridging the digital divide. BBC.co.uk, 1999
Vamosi, Robert. Antivirus software must be free. Here's why. ZDnet.com, 2004.
Gaudin, Sharon. IT and End Users Differ on Spam Severity. EnterpriseITplanet.com, 2004.
Microsoft Corporation. Project 2003: Microsoft Office project portfolio management
programs and solutions. Microsoft.com, 2005.
Gilbert, Alorie. Microsoft and SAP Square Up for Business Applications Battle. CNET
News.com, 2003.
Oracle.com. Oracle's Complete E-Business Suite—The Fastest Way to Enterprise
Intelligence. 2005.
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IBM.com. Information Technology Infrastructure—Key to Your
Business Success. 2005.
Robertson, James. Knowledge management project for Roads and Traffic Authority (RTA).,
2001.
Santusos, Megan, Srmacz, Jon. The ABCs of Knowledge Management. CIO Magazine 2001.
KM-Forum.org. What is Knowledge Management. 2002.
Wilson, T.D. The Nonsense of Knowledge Management. Information Research, 8(1), paper
no. 144, 2002.
Choo, Chen Wei. The Knowing Organization. 1999.
Shein, Esther The Knowledge Crunch. CIO Magazine, 2001.
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