Assignment 2(MIS2)

What should be the nature of the relationship between the business plan and the IS plan? (at least 2000 words)

Organizations find some strategies that will help building the name of the company and achieve a competitive advantage as technology is concern. The trend of technology nowadays is fast changing. It would be better if organizations will adapt into these changes and eventually embrace the new technology offered for the businesses to progress. Since business and IT works hand on hand, there relationship will provide a great means in achieving the goals set in for the organization. The business will not just bloom by itself but also those people using the technology as a resource. A business plan and IS plan has a relationship specially nowadays information technology involves more than just computer literacy;

What is a Business Plan??
A business plan is a formal statement of a set of business goals, the reasons why they are believed attainable, and the plan for reaching those goals. It may also contain background information about the organization or team attempting to reach those goals.

The business goals may be defined for for-profit or for non-profit organizations. For-profit business plans typically focus on financial goals, such as profit or creation of wealth. Non-profit and government agency business plans tend to focus on organizational mission which is the basis for their governmental status or their non-profit, tax-exempt status, respectively—although non-profits may also focus on optimizing revenue. In non-profit organizations, creative tensions may develop in the effort to balance mission with "margin" (or revenue). Business plans may also target changes in perception and branding by the customer, client, tax-payer, or larger community. A business plan having changes in perception and branding as its primary goals is called a marketing plan.
Business plans are decision-making tools. There is no fixed content for a business plan. Rather the content and format of the business plan is determined by the goals and audience. A business plan should contain whatever information is needed to decide whether or not to pursue a goal.
For example, a business plan for a non-profit might discuss the fit between the business plan and the organization’s mission. Banks are quite concerned about defaults, so a business plan for a bank loan will build a convincing case for the organization’s ability to repay the loan. Venture capitalists are primarily concerned about initial investment, feasibility, and exit valuation. A business plan for a project requiring equity financing will need to explain why current resources, upcoming growth opportunities, and sustainable competitive advantage will lead to a high exit valuation.
Preparing a business plan draws on a wide range of knowledge from many different business disciplines: finance, human resource management, intellectual property management, supply chain management, operations management, and marketing, among others. It can be helpful to view the business plan as a collection of sub-plans, one for each of the main business disciplines.
"... a good business plan can help to make a good business credible, understandable, and attractive to someone who is unfamiliar with the business. Writing a good business plan can’t guarantee success, but it can go a long way toward reducing the odds of failure."
Presentation formats
The format of a business plan depends on its presentation context. It is not uncommon for businesses, especially start-ups to have three or four formats for the same business plan:
• an "elevator pitch" - a three minute summary of the business plan's executive summary. This is often used as a teaser to awaken the interest of potential funders, customers, or strategic partners.
• an oral presentation - a hopefully entertaining slide show and oral narrative that is meant to trigger discussion and interest potential investors in reading the written presentation. The content of the presentation is usually limited to the executive summary and a few key graphs showing financial trends and key decision making benchmarks. If a new product is being proposed and time permits, a demonstration of the product may also be included.
• a written presentation for external stakeholders - a detailed, well written, and pleasingly formatted plan targeted at external stakeholders.
• an internal operational plan - a detailed plan describing planning details that are needed by management but may not be of interest to external stakeholders. Such plans have a somewhat higher degree of candor and informality than the version targeted at external stakeholders.
Typical structure for a business plan for a start up venture[8]
• cover page and table of contents
• executive summary
• business description
• business environment analysis
• industry background
• competitive analysis
• market analysis
• marketing plan
• operations plan
• management summary
• financial plan
• attachments and milestones
Revisiting the business plan
Cost overruns and revenue shortfalls
Cost and revenue estimates are central to any business plan for deciding the viability of the planned venture. But costs are often underestimated and revenues overestimated resulting in later cost overruns, revenue shortfalls, and possibly non-viability. During the dot-com bubble 1997-2001 this was a problem for many technology start-ups. However, the problem is not limited to technology or the private sector; public works projects also routinely suffer from cost overruns and/or revenue shortfalls. The main causes of cost overruns and revenue shortfalls are optimism bias and strategic misrepresentation.[9][10] Reference class forecasting has been developed to reduce the risks of cost overruns and revenue shortfalls.
Uses of Business Plan
Venture capital
• Business plan contests - provides a way for venture capitals to find promising projects
Public offerings
• In a public offering, potential investors can evaluate perspectives of issuing company
Within corporations
Fundraising
Fundraising is the primary purpose for many business plans, since they are related to the inherent probable success/failure of the company risk.
Total quality management
Total quality management (TQM) is a business management strategy aimed at embedding awareness of quality in all organizational processes. TQM has been widely used in manufacturing, education, call centers, government, and service industries, as well as NASA space and science programs.
Management by objective
Management by objectives (MBO) is a process of agreeing upon objectives within an organization so that management and employees agree to the objectives and understand what they are in the organization.
Strategic planning
Strategic planning is an organization's process of defining its strategy, or direction, and making decisions on allocating its resources to pursue this strategy, including its capital and people. Various business analysis techniques can be used in strategic planning, including SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats ) and PEST analysis (Political, Economic, Social, and Technological analysis) or STEER analysis involving Socio-cultural, Technological, Economic, Ecological, and Regulatory factors and EPISTELS (Environment, Political, Informative, Social, Technological, Economic, Legal and Spiritual)
Education
K-12
Business plans are used in some primary and secondary programs to teach economic principles. Wikiversity has a Lunar Boom Town project where students of all ages can collaborate with designing and revising business models and practice evaluating them to learn practical business planning techniques and methodology.

What is an IS plan

 Information Systems (IS) refers to the interaction between processes and technology. This interaction can occur within or across organizational boundaries. An information system is not only the technology an organization uses, but also the way in which the organizations interact with the technology and the way in which the technology works with the organization’s business processes. Information systems are distinct from information technology in that an information system has an information technology component that interacts with the processes components.

Strategic Information Systems Planning Methodologies
The task of strategic information systems planning is difficult and often time organizations
do not know how to do it. Strategic information systems planning is a major change for
organizations, from planning for information systems based on users’ demands to those based on
business strategy. Also strategic information systems planning changes the planning characteristics
in major ways. For example, the time horizon for planning changes from 1 year to 3 years or more
and development plans are driven by current and future business needs rather than incremental user
needs. Increase in the time horizon is a factor which results in poor response from the top
management to the strategic information systems planning process as it is difficult to hold their
attention for such a long period. Other questions associated with strategic information systems
planning are related to the scope of the planning study, the focus of the planning exercise - corporate
organization vs. strategic business unit, number of studies and their sequence, choosing a strategic
information systems planning methodology or developing one if none is suitable, targets of planning
process and deliverables. Because of the complexity of the strategic information systems planning
process and uniqueness of each organization, there is no one best way to tackle it. Vitale, et al.
(1986) classify SISP methodologies into two categories: impact and alignment. Impact
methodologies help create and justify new uses of IT, while the methodologies in the “alignment”
category align IS objectives with organizational goals.

Characteristics of a Quality ISP

A quality ISP must exhibit five distinct characteristics before it is useful. These five are presented in the table that follows.

1. Timely - The ISP must be timely. An ISP that is created long after it is needed is useless. In almost all cases, it makes no sense to take longer to plan work than to perform the work planned.
2. Useable - The ISP must be useable. It must be so for all the projects as well as for each project. The ISP should exist in sections that once adopted can be parceled out to project managers and immediately started.
3. Maintainable - The ISP should be maintainable. New business opportunities, new computers, business mergers, etc. all affect the ISP. The ISP must support quick changes to the estimates; technologies employed, and possibly even to the fundamental project sequences. Once these changes are accomplished, the new ISP should be just a few computer program executions away.
4. Quality - While the ISP must be a quality product, no ISP is ever perfect on the first try. As the ISP is executed, the metrics employed to derive the individual project estimates become refined as a consequence of new hardware technologies, code generators, techniques, or faster working staff. As these changes occur, their effects should be installable into the data that supports ISP computation. In short, the ISP is a living document. It should be updated with every technology event, and certainly no less often than quarterly.
5. Reproducible - The ISP must be reproducible. That is, when its development activities are performed by any other staff, the ISP produced should essentially be the same. The ISP should not significantly vary by staff assigned.


References: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_plan
http://www.business-plan-success.com/Articles/BusinessPlanDefinition/