Strategic Planning Topics:

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 organizations 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
organizations 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 everyones 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 directors.
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 companys 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
subsequentsystem 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 institutes 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 softwares 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 customers 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