Assignment 2 (Due: before November 29, 2009, 13:00hrs)

jojimie

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

Let me define first a business plan, in its simplest form, will usually define where you want your business to be within a certain period of time (usually five years) and how you plan on getting there. A business plan is as important for starting a business as blueprints are for building your house. 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.
When starting a new business, writing a business plan is an important first step to getting started. A business plan will lay out the direction for the future of your company and begin to establish standards for success. A complete business plan should include five-year financial projections. These projections will assist investors with making decisions about your business and help you to know how much funding you will need to get things rolling.
A business plan should define how you would like to operate your business. This includes describing the management team, the marketing strategy, and the methods in which you will interact with customers. A business plan might project a strategy that reflects the management style of the founders of the business. The definition should be clear but flexible.
Business plans are developed for many purposes. One company might be looking for funding from investors. Another company might be looking for a loan from a bank. Your company might just need to plan out the company’s strategy to make sure it is successful. Whatever the case, every business needs a business plan.

Purpose of the Business Plan
It must operate and, ultimately, succeed or fail. For management or entrepreneurs seeking external support, the plan is the most important sales document that they are ever likely to produce as it could be the key to raising finance etc. Preparation of a comprehensive plan will not guarantee success in raising funds or mobilizing support, but lack of a sound plan will, almost certainly, ensure failure.

Importance of the Business Planning Process
Preparing a satisfactory business plan is a painful but essential exercise. The planning process forces managers or entrepreneurs to understand more clearly what they want to achieve, and how and when they can do it. Even if no external support is needed, a business plan can play a vital role in helping to avoid mistakes or recognize hidden opportunities. It is much easier to fold a sheet of paper than a business.
For many, many entrepreneurs and planners, the process of planning (thinking, discussing, researching and analyzing) is just as, or even more, useful than the final plan. So, even if you don't need a formal plan, think carefully about going through the planning process. It could be enormously beneficial to your business.
Anticipate many weeks of hard work and several drafts of the emerging plan to get the job right. A clearly written and attractively packaged business plan will make it easier to interest possible supporters, investors etc. A well-prepared business plan will demonstrate that the managers or entrepreneurs know the business and that they have thought through its development in terms of products, management, finances, and most importantly, markets and competition.

WHAT is ISP?
• ISP = IS + P

Why Planning is Important?
• Systematic approach in dealing with future uncertainties. It focuses efforts and resources on long-term, general objectives and yet provides a foundation for short-term activities. Provides a framework for action. Planning involves thinking ahead and designing future action.

Definition.
• ISP is the planning of information systems for an organization. Information system planning is assessing the information needs of an organization and defining the systems, databases and technologies that best satisfy those needs.

ISP Key Activities
1. Describing current situation: it includes a listing of the manual and automated processes, listing of manual and automated data, technology inventory and human resources inventory.
2. Describing future situation: includes blueprints of manual and automated processes, blueprints of manual and automated data, technology blueprints and human resources blueprints.
3. Describing scheduling of the project: includes scheduling of manual and automated processes, scheduling of manual and automated data, technology of scheduling and human resources scheduling.
ISP Planning Types
• Top-Down Planning: A generic information systems planning methodology that attempts to gain a broad understanding of the information system needs of the entire organization.
• Bottom-up Planning: generic information systems planning methodology that identifies and defines IS development projects based upon solving operational business problems or taking advantages of some business opportunities.
Components of ISP
• The Process of Information Systems Planning
• Strategic Alignment of Business and IT
• Selecting Systems to Invest In
• Project Management Issues

Why ISP?
Why do we need to plan for IS?
 To ensure that IS both complements and assists in the achievement of our business goals.
 To ensure that the use of scarce resources are maximized within a business.
 To maximize the benefits of changing technology.
 To take account of the different viewpoints of business professionals and IT professionals.

Who Perform ISP?
 IS Planners / System Analyst
 Variety of stakeholders (i.e. sponsor, users)
 Top management commitment
 successful ISP.

Where & When ISP?
 Any organization that has interest in getting the best out of its IT investments.
 Facing problems
 Grabbing opportunities.
 Information Systems (IS) fail to satisfy huge, diverse and complicated information requirements of their users.

HOW?
 Look at business structure, function, processes, culture
 Look at existing IT
 Look at available technology.
 Carry out interviews.
 Develop policies.
 Develop application portfolio.
 Plan schedules for migration, implementation etc.

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.

Reference:
http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~nkm/sisp/CONTENTS.html
http://www.business-plan-success.com/Articles/BusinessPlanDefinition/
http://www.tdan.com/view-articles/5262
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_plan

You are always welcome to visit on my personal blog: lol!

http://www.megsgang050890.blogspot.com/

Sheila Capacillo · Subject: Assignment 2(MIS2) Sun Jan 24, 2010 10:28 pm

What do you think is the relationship between Business and Information System plan? To further discuss let us know what does it mean.

Business Plan

Based on the Wikipedia,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 may be internally or externally focused. Externally focused plans target goals that are important to external stakeholders, particularly financial stakeholders. They typically have detailed information about the organization or team attempting to reach the goals. With for-profit entities, external stakeholders include investors and customers. External stake-holders of non-profits include donors and the clients of the non-profit's services. For government agencies, external stakeholders include tax-payers, higher-level government agencies, and international lending bodies such as the IMF, the World Bank, various economic agencies of the UN, and development banks.

Internally focused business plans target intermediate goals required to reach the external goals. They may cover the development of a new product, a new service, a new IT system, a restructuring of finance, the refurbishing of a factory or a restructuring of the organization. An internal business plan is often developed in conjunction with a balanced scorecard or a list of critical success factors. This allows success of the plan to be measured using non-financial measures. Business plans that identify and target internal goals, but provide only general guidance on how they will be met are called strategic plans.

Operational plans describe the goals of an internal organization, working group or department. Project plans, sometimes known as project frameworks, describe the goals of a particular project. They may also address the project's place within the organization's larger strategic goals.
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

IS Plan
Characteristic Description

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The ISP Steps

The information systems plan project determines the sequence for implementing specific information systems. The goal of the strategy is to deliver the most valuable business information at the earliest time possible in the most cost-effective manner.
The end product of the information systems project is an information systems plan (ISP). Once deployed, the information systems department can implement the plan with confidence that they are doing the correct information systems project at the right time and in the right sequence. The focus of the ISP is not one information system but the entire suite of information systems for the enterprise. Once developed, each identified information system is seen in context with all other information systems within the enterprise.
Information Systems Plan Development Steps
Step Name Description
1. Create the mission model -The mission model, generally shorter than 30 pages presents end-result characterizations of the essential raison d=etre of the enterprise. Missions are strategic, long range, and a-political because they are stripped of the Awho@ and the Ahow.@
2. Develop a high-level data model -The high-level data model is an Entity Relationship diagram created to meet the data needs of the mission descriptions. No attributes or keys are created.
3. Create the resource life cycles (RLC) and their nodes -Resources are drawn from both the mission descriptions and the high level data model. Resources and their life cycles are the names, descriptions and life cycles of the critical assets of the enterprise, which, when exercised achieve one or more aspect of the missions. Each enterprise resource Alives@ through its resource life cycle.
4. Allocate precedence vectors among RLC nodes -Tied together into a enablement network, the resulting resource life cycle network forms a framework of enterprise=s assets that represent an order and set of inter-resource relationships. The enterprise Alives@ through its resource life cycle network.
5. Allocate existing information systems and databases to the RLC nodes -The resource life cycle network presents a Alattice-work@onto which the Aas is@ business information systems and databases can be Aattached.@ See for example, the meta model in Figure 2. The Ato-be@ databases and information systems are similarly attached. ADifference projects@ between the Aas-is@ and the Ato-be@ are then formulated. Achievement of all the difference projects is the achievement of the Information Systems Plan.
6. Allocate standard work break down structures (WBS) to each RLC node -Detailed planning of the Adifference projects@ entails allocating the appropriate canned work breakdown structures and metrics. Employing WBS and metrics from a comprehensive methodology supports project management standardization, repeatability, and self-learning.
7. Load resources into each WBS node -Once the resources are determined, these are loaded into the project management meta entities of the meta data repository, that is, metrics, project, work plan and deliverables.
8. Schedule the RLC nodes through a project management package facilities. -The entire suite of projects is then scheduled on an enterprise-wide basis. The PERT chart used by project management is the APERT@ chart represented by the Resource Life Cycle enablement network.
9. Produce and review of the ISP -The scheduled result is predicable: Too long, too costly, and too ambitious. At that point, the real work starts: paring down the suite of projects to a realistic set within time and budget. Because of the meta data environment (see Figure 1), the integrated project management meta data (see Figure 2), and because all projects are configured against fundamental business-rationale based designs, the results of the inevitable trade-offs can be set against business basics. Although the process is painful, the results can be justified and rationalized.
10. Execute and adjust the ISP through time. -As the ISP is set into execution, technology changes occur that affect resource loadings. In this case, only steps 6-9 need to be repeated. As work progresses, the underlying meta data built or used in steps 1-5 will also change. Because a quality ISP is Aautomated@ the recasting of the ISP should only take a week or less.
Collectively, the first nine steps take about 5000 staff hours, or about $500,000. Compared to an IS budget $15-35 million, that's only about 3.0% to 1.0%.
If the pundits are to be believed, that is, that the right information at the right time is the competitive edge, then paying for an information systems plan that is accurate, repeatable, and reliable is a small price indeed.
Executive and Adjusting the ISP Through Time
IT projects are accomplished within distinct development environments. The two most common are: discrete project and release. The discrete project environment is typified by completely encapsulated projects accomplished through a water-fall methodology.
In release environments, there are a number of different projects underway by different organizations and staff of varying skill levels. Once a large number of projects are underway, the ability of the enterprise to know about and manage all the different projects degrades rapidly. That is because the project management environment has been transformed from discrete encapsulated projects into a continuous flow process of product or functionality improvements that are released on a set time schedule. Figure 3 illustrates the continuous flow process environment that supports releases. The continuous flow process environment is characterized by:
•Multiple, concurrent, but differently scheduled projects against the same enterprise resource
•Single projects that affect multiple enterprise resources
•Projects that develop completely new capabilities, or changes to existing capabilities within enterprise resources

In summary, any technique employed to achieve an ISP must be accomplishable with less than 3% of the IT budget. Additionally, it must be timely, useable, maintainable, able to be iterated into a quality product, and reproducible. IT organizations, once they have completed their initial set of should apply databases and business information systems will find themselves transformed from a project to a release environment.
The continuous flow environment then becomes the only viable alternative for moving the enterprise forward. It is precisely because of the release environment that enterprise-wide information systems plans that can be created, evolved, and maintained are essential.

RELATIONSHIP between the 2

We know that both of them have a Deeper analization, it means each of them should follow steps but in the case of IS plan it is more detailed. when we say planning, it is in organizations and public policy is both the organizational process of creating and maintaining a plan; and the psychological process of thinking about the activities required to create a desired goal on some scale. As such, it is a fundamental property of intelligent behavior. This thought process is essential to the creation and refinement of a plan, or integration of it with other plans, that is, it combines forecasting of developments with the preparation of scenarios of how to react to them.

Blog blog blog:
http://shecapacillo.blogspot.com/

References:
http://www.tdan.com/view-articles/5262

Jezreel Jyl P. Hilado

Let me first define what business plan is based on my research.

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 may be internally or externally focused. Externally focused plans target goals that are important to external stakeholders, particularly financial stakeholders. They typically have detailed information about the organization or team attempting to reach the goals. With for-profit entities, external stakeholders include investors and customers. External stake-holders of non-profits include donors and the clients of the non-profit's services. For government agencies, external stakeholders include tax-payers, higher-level government agencies, and international lending bodies such as the IMF, the World Bank, various economic agencies of the UN, and development banks.

Internally focused business plans target intermediate goals required to reach the external goals. They may cover the development of a new product, a new service, a new IT system, a restructuring of finance, the refurbishing of a factory or a restructuring of the organization. An internal business plan is often developed in conjunction with a balanced scorecard or a list of critical success factors. This allows success of the plan to bemeasured using non-financial measures. Business plans that identify and target internal goals, but provide only general guidance on how they will be met are called strategic plans.
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.I t 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."

Next i will define what is Information System based on my references.

An information System plan is a a process for developing a strategy and plans for aligning information systems with the business
strategies of an organization. The systems planning function of the life cycle seeks to identify and prioritize those technologies and applications that will return the most value to the business. Synonyms include strategic systems planning and Information resource management. Study the Business Mission with Information System Although many businesses haven't formally documented their mission, they all have one. If information systems are to truly return value to the business, they need to directly address that mission. Thus, the first phase of systems planning is to study the business mission.

Some make a clear distinction between information systems, ICT and business processes. Information systems are distinct from information technology in that an information system is typically seen as having an ICT component. Information systems are also different from business processes. Information systems help to control the performance of business processes.

Alter argues for an information system as a special type of work system. A work system is a system in which humans and/or machines perform work using resources (including ICT) to produce specific products and/or services for customers. An information system is a work system whose activities are devoted to processing (capturing, transmitting, storing, retrieving, manipulating and displaying)information.

Part of the difficulty in defining the term information system is due to vagueness in the definition of related terms such as system and information. Beynon-Davies argues for a clearer terminology based in systemics and semiotics. He defines an information system as an example of a system concerned with the manipulation of signs. An information system is a type of socio-technical system. An information system is a mediating construct between actions and technology.

Information System Planning (ISP) is a structured approach developed by IBM to assist organizations in establishing a plan to satisfy
their short and long term information requirements. The ISP methodology was implemented at Tel-Aviv University. A comprehensive plan for the development of a Management Information System (MIS) was derived. This paper presents a review of the process by which the plan was obtained, a discussion of the methodology, and its ramifications. information system is frequently used to refer to the interaction between people, processes, data and technology. In this sense, the term is used to refer not only to the information and communication technology (ICT) an organization uses, but also to the way in which people interact with this technology in support of business processes .

REFERENCES:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_plan
http://www.tdan.com/view-articles/5262

VISIT MY BLOG

http://fujiwarayumi.blogspot.com/

Ida Karla Duguran

Sir Gamboa,

Due to the accident that I had in the school for the past few months, I wasn’t able to pass my assignments on time. In regards to this, our class Mayor, Ms. Marren Joy Pequiro and I had a conformity that allows me to submit and posts my assignments in this forum with consideration.

Ida Karla Duguran

What should be the relationship between the business plan and information system plan is basically a homework assigned by my professor for me to really work hard on. Honestly, I am not born a business entrepreneur nor an information technology expert yet I have to try to present my views in this regards as possible as I can but by way of quoting some experts' minds and ideas about these issues that I have to deal with. Defining what a plan is, might be of great help to develop my upcoming statements about this matter. What is a Plan therefore? In my own definition and understanding, I simply define "plan" as a product of my thoughts on how to go about with something that I have in my mind. How to make it realized must be considered so I have to definitely write down the steps on how should I do it, what materials do I need, consider the procedure and eventually record some hypothesis and observations gathered from what I have done, try and maybe retry the process until I succeed or get what I expect to get out from what I intend to do. Making suggestions and recommendations might also be helpful in doing so.

Now, what about business? what does it mean? Thanks God for Wikipedia for it defined the term explicitly as
"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. " Wikipedia also displays the contents of a business plan as follows..

"Business plans may be internally or externally focused. Externally focused plans target goals that are important to external stakeholders, particularly financial stakeholders. They typically have detailed information about the organization or team attempting to reach the goals. With for-profit entities, external stakeholders include investors and customers. External stake-holders of non-profits include donors and the clients of the non-profit's services. For government agencies, external stakeholders include tax-payers, higher-level government agencies, and international lending bodies such as the IMF, the World Bank, various economic agencies of the UN, and development banks.

Internally focused business plans target intermediate goals required to reach the external goals. They may cover the development of a new product, a new service, a new IT system, a restructuring of finance, the refurbishing of a factory or a restructuring of the organization. An internal business plan is often developed in conjunction with a balanced scorecard or a list of critical success factors. This allows success of the plan to be measured using non-financial measures. Business plans that identify and target internal goals, but provide only general guidance on how they will be met are calledstrategic plans.

Operational plans describe the goals of an internal organization, working group or department. Project plans, sometimes known as project frameworks, describe the goals of a particular project. They may also address the project's place within the organization's larger strategic goals.

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
• 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. Reference class forecasting has been developed to reduce the risks of cost overruns and revenue shortfalls.

Legal and liability issues

Disclosure requirements

An externally targeted business plan should list all legal concerns and financial liabilities that might negatively affect investors. Depending on the amount of funds being raised and the audience to whom the plan is presented, failure to do this may have severe legal consequences.

Limitations on content and audience

Non disclosure agreements (NDAs) with third parties, non-compete agreements, conflicts of interest, privacy concerns, and the protection of one'strade secrets may severely limit the audience to which one might show the business plan. Alternatively, they may require each party receiving the business plan to sign a contract accepting special clauses and conditions.

This situation is complicated by the fact that many venture capitalists will refuse to sign an NDA before looking at a business plan, lest it put them in the untenable position of looking at two independently developed look-alike business plans, both claiming originality. In such situations one may need to develop two versions of the business plan: a stripped down plan that can be used to develop a relationship and a detail plan that is only shown when investors have sufficient interest and trust to sign an NDA.

Open business plans

Traditionally business plans have been highly confidential and quite limited in audience. The business plan itself is generally regarded as secret. However the emergence of free software and open source has opened the model and made the notion of an open business plan possible.

An open business plan is a business plan with unlimited audience. The business plan is typically web published and made available to all.

In the free software and open source business model, trade secrets, copyright and patents can no longer be used as effective locking mechanisms to provide sustainable advantages to a particular business and therefore a secret business plan is less relevant in those models.

While the origin of the open business plan model is in the free software and Libre services arena, the concept is likely applicable to other domains.

Uses

Venture capital
• Business plan contests - provides a way for venture capitals to find promising projects
• Venture capital assessment of business plans - focus on qualitative factors such as team.

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)

Now, what about the information system? My deep appreciation for Wikipedia is extended to this avenue for helping me make my search and my work so easy to understand, exact and meaningful as I quote.. " Information Systems (or IS) is historically defined as a 'bridge' between the business world and computer science, but this discipline is slowly evolving towards a well-defined science. Typically, Information Systems (or IS) include colleagues, procedures, data, software, and hardware (by degree) that are used to gather and analyze information. Specifically computer-based information systems are complementary networks of hardware/software that people and organizations use to collect, filter, process, create, & distribute data. Today, Computer Information System(s) or CIS is often a minor track within the computer science field pursuing the study of computers and algorithmic processes, including their principles, their software & hardware designs, their applications, and their impact on society. Overall, an IS discipline emphasizes functionality over design.

In a broad sense, the term Information Systems refers to the interaction between algorithmic 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 (IT) in that an information system has an information technology component that interacts with the processes components.

An Information System consists of four parts which include: procedures, software, hardware, and information or data, which are essentially the same. There are various types of information systems, for example: transaction processing systems, office systems, decision support systems, knowledge management systems, database management systems, and office information systems. Critical to most information systems are information technologies, which are typically designed to enable humans to perform tasks for which the human brain is not well suited, such as: handling large amounts of information, performing complex calculations, and controlling many simultaneous processes.

Information technologies are a very important and malleable resource available to executives. Many companies have created a position of Chief Information Officer (CIO) that sits on the executive board with the Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Chief Operating Officer (COO) and Chief Technical Officer (CTO).The CTO may also serve as CIO, and vice versa. The Chief Information Security Officer(CISO), who focuses on information security within an organization, normally reports to the CIO.

In this regard, information system professionals and their associates have strong analytical and critical thinking skills to implement large-scale business models within any organization. Although solving problems within an organization is a common practice, IS professionals have the ability to automate these solutions via programmable technologies without violating ethical principles. As an end-result, IS professionals must have a broad business and real world perspective to implement technology solutions that enhance organizational performance.

Now that I have at least presented some facts and ideas about the business plan and information system as quoted from reliable source, it is hoped that a comprehensive grasp between the two concerns could at least be attained. Knowing some basic facts and nature about these two aspects could at least lead us to identify or point out what should be the relationship between them. In my own understanding, I could say that an information system plan is very important in going about the business plan. The way I look at it...the business plan is the body while the information system is the blood of the whole system.

Franz Cie B. Suico

The question was what should be the nature of the relationship between the business plan and the IS plan? To answer the question I will need information that would answer the question and thus ill be able to decide in my own understanding what should be the relationship between the business plan and the information systems plan. So first we should gather enough information in relation to the said topic so that we could answer it correctly. To start, I will define what a business plan and what is information systems plan or also called strategic planning.

According to wikipedia.org 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.

While 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 ), PEST analysis (Political, Economic, Social, and Technological), STEER analysis (Socio-cultural, Technological, Economic, Ecological, and Regulatory factors), and EPISTEL (Environment, Political, Informatic, Social, Technological, Economic and Legal).

Strategic planning is the formal consideration of an organization's future course. All strategic planning deals with at least one of three key questions:

1. "What do we do?"
2. "For whom do we do it?"
3. "How do we excel?"

In business strategic planning, the third question is better phrased "How can we beat or avoid competition?". (Bradford and Duncan, page 1).

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 extend their vision to 20 years.

In order to determine where it is going, the organization needs to know exactly where it stands, then determine where it wants to go and how it will get there. The resulting document is called the "strategic plan."

It is also true that strategic planning may be a tool for effectively plotting the direction of a company; however, strategic planning itself cannot foretell exactly how the market will evolve and what issues will surface in the coming days in order to plan your organizational strategy. Therefore, strategic innovation and tinkering with the 'strategic plan' have to be a cornerstone strategy for an organization to survive the turbulent business climate.
So for me the relationship between business plan and strategic plan is this:

• Why plan?
– To obtain resources
• Financial
• Facilities – “Capacity planning”
• Staff
– To align IS with the business
– To identify needed applications
– To establish goals, schedules, and milestones in order to track progress
– To provide an opportunity for communication with top management and user management
• Outcomes vs. process?
• Reactive vs. proactive?
• Planning vs. forecasting?
– Forecasting is predicting the future
– Planning is being prepared for that future

Information Systems Strategic Planning
• Establish a mission statement
• Assess the environment
• Set goals and objectives
• Derive strategies and policies
• Develop long-, medium-, and short-range plans
• Implement plans and monitor results

Establish a mission statement
• These are the services that you are responsible for; it is your place in the organization
• It is not what you are supposed to achieve, it is who you are and what you do in the company

Assess the environment(s) . . .
1. The capabilities of the IT department
2. The readiness of the company to use IT
3. The status of our customers, our industry
4. The status of the economy, government regulations, environment, society, etc.
5. Technology

This is similar to a SWOT analysis – Strengths and Weakness – items no. 1 & 2; and Opportunities and Threats – items no. 3, 4, & 5

Goals and Objectives
• Set goals – what do you want to achieve?
• Set objectives – what are your specific, measurable targets?

Derive strategies and policies
• Strategies for
– Technology focus
– Personnel and career development
– Aligning with the company
– Others . . .
• Policies for
– Funding criteria; how much to spend on IT?
– Allocation criteria; priority setting
– Organizational arrangements
– Use of outside IT services, outsourcing
– Selling IT services to outside organizations
– Others . . .

Short-, medium-, and long-range plans
• Short-range – the next year, the next budget period; developing and operating current systems
• Medium-range – committing to development efforts for applications that will take more than one year to complete; meeting management’s current information needs, projected into the future for as many years as needed to complete them. This is what most organizations call “Long-Range Planning.”
• Long-range planning – preparing for management’s future information needs. These are not application specific; they are investments in infrastructure; it is creating an information architecture.

And finally, implement plans and monitor results.

Business planning and strategic planning are very closely interrelated. Business planning can be seen as an aspect of the overall strategic planning of a company, minutely following in written form all the sides of the business. Also, the strategic planning can be seen from the perspective of the business plan of a company as a delineator of main rough, undetailed aspects.

Strategic planning implies general directions of a business, main strategies, a long-term perspective, for about 2-4 years.

Business plans, on the other hand, state in detail the data of the business from the marketing point of view, from the management and personnel point of view and from the financial point of view. They also contain stipulations for contingencies. They offer a shorter term perspective, for about 1 year.

In a world of an ever increasing competition, less stable and predictable, planning has become more important for managers, conditioning business existence. Times are for thorough analysis of a business from all its perspectives, the difference between an evolving business and a failure depends on this.

Even if inclined to base their actions on immediate-gain grounds, successful business managers have learned to take their time for a prospective analysis. Even if initially starting off their business on a gut feeling, successful talented managers have learned that they have to go beyond the gut feeling, putting together a concrete plan of action, meant to enhance more stability and reduce the tendency of working at random.

Although there are voices saying that most successful businesses did not need a plan to begin with, I would not minimize the importance of a business plan, integrated within the strategic business planning, as every business, be it small or "oversized" will need a plan in a certain stage of its growing. The reason might be not necessarily its founding, but the need to communicate in the business environment — be it raising some money or hiring quality personnel.

Basically we can refer to the strategic business planning through the SWOT analysis used for marketing: analysis and identification of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Strengths and weaknesses are internal factors of the business, while opportunities and threats are external factors.

The strength analysis requires a look at the advantages of a business, its strong points and all its resources and capabilities that can be used as a basis for developing a competitive advantage.
Weakness may be absence of certain strengths. Weaknesses' analysis must reveal where there is room for improvement, what is there to avoid.

Opportunities and threats are triggered by environmental occurrences such as unexplored marketing niche, new technologies, new loosened regulations, identifiable as opportunities or, on the contrary, threats such as consumers' change in tastes away from the firm's products, new regulations, debt or cash-flow problems, etc.

The business plan treats in detail the main directions that the strategic planning settles. If strategic planning provides general directions for the next 2 years, the business plan analysis what the business' characteristics are, how to implement the directions, what will the impact on the market and the potential customers be, the financial side of the action etc., generally all the ins and outs of the matter.
When starting a business online there are some things you certainly want to know and be able to put in place to offer yourself a much higher chance at success.

The first draft of a business plan for an online venture must include the means and targets you are going to use to drive customers to your business that are more inclined to buy.
It makes sense that just being able to send random people to your business is not going to lead to a high percentage of buyers. This is why we target and the internet gives us the easiest way to find our potential customers and put our products or services in front of them without spending a dime.

Advertising online has much more to do with knowing than it does with spending. There are certainly ways you can spend money online advertising and make a very good return. When starting a business and putting together that first draft of a business plan you want to consider these as well if you can afford them.

You key is going to be spending time looking at the searches people are making every day online as they relate to whatever it is your are trying to use as your online business.

If you are selling bird cages you would want to know what searches people are making and in what frequency in order to craft your website and content to attract those people. This is the key to making money online regardless of what type of product or services your new online business is offering.

So basically, the relationship between the business plan and IS plan is that the IS plan is inclined to what the organization or business is aiming at. They should be related to each other to meet a common goal. So basically that’s it.

References:
Wikipedia.org
http://www.businessplanning.ws/learn/business-strategic-planning.html
http://ezinearticles.com/?Starting-a-Business---First-Draft-of-a-Business-Plan&id=3868596

please visit my blog @ www.franzcie.blogspot.com

afro

vanessa may caneda · Subject: Business and IS plan.. Thu Mar 11, 2010 9:03 pm

Today information technology involves more than just computer literacy; it also takes into account how computers work and how these computers can further be used not just for information processing but also for communications and problem solving tasks as well. Information has emerged as an agent of integration and the enabler of new competitiveness for today’s enterprise in the global marketplace. It has been widely used in many business operations since it would play a very crucial part in the development of the business. Competition is there and with that, 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.

Business varies in character, as in being simpler or more complex. The varying complexity entails that the parties need different amounts of information from each other. Thus, it also inflicts on the possibilities and outcome of how information technology can be employed as well as how it impacts on business.

Information technology has certain distinguishing characteristics in a business setting, mainly as it provides the ability to increase efficiency due to the reduction of time needed to get information, the facilitation of rapid response and reaction, and the ability to handle both simple and complex content.

For companies involved in business of higher complexity, information technology can provide many solutions that can be used to enhance the flow or management of data and information. It can be anything from making orders on email to systems for order-delivery-payment or product development through shared databases.
Before an organization achieves the direction they wanted for their business, it all started with setting up some plans. That exist 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. Setting up goals really takes the companies go up high. Being globally competitive is just one of those goals they set in. But thinking of the current status of business companies over the world, it’s clear that technology advancement plays a big part in their success. There exists a relationship between businesses into information systems. It involves planning as it was the first step. Since business plan is about the goals of the organization and it may be internally or externally focused. Externally focused plans target goals that are important to external stakeholders, particularly financial stakeholders. They typically have detailed information about the organization or team attempting to reach the goals while internally focused business plans target intermediate goals required to reach the external goals. They may cover the development of a new product, a new service, a new IT system, a restructuring of finance, the refurbishing of a factory or a restructuring of the organization. It was mentioned of having a new IT system. So what would be the role of IT as information systems are being used? What is Information System Plan? Information System brings life to the overall operation of the business. Organisations typically develop rolling business plans, they are constructed by taking into account the current business, the external influences on the business (e.g. the economy, government policy and technological advances), and the aims and objectives of the most senior levels of management. The strategic business plan describes how the organisation will strive to move from the current business to the target business.Information Systems support is necessary to achieve the strategic business plan, so the business plan feeds into a Strategic Information Systems Plan (SISP), which describes how the current IT systems are intended to evolve into the target IT systems. A 'big bang' approach is infeasible, therefore a project based approach is used. The output of the SISP is a series of development projects which will either involve modifying existing systems or developing new systems which are likelty to have to interface or integrate with exisiting systems. Information systems were developed simply to improve the efficiency of specific business functions. More recently information systems have been viewed as tools for obtaining competitive advantage.

Reference:
http://www.comp.glam.ac.uk/pages/staff/tdhutchings/chapter1.html

Venus Millena

Management Information System (MIS) requires understanding about the subject contents and components, and its essentiality in the society, and how it works and affects human life. Starting our journey about the MIS environment, we must first know what the stuffs we must consider in introducing MIS are Business Industries and Information Technology (IS) itself, and how they are correlate each other. This first step will give us the idea that IS is one of the elements in the business world, that is why as an IT students we have to adopt and considered the business industry, and how to link IT into its prospect industry. Based on the learning’s that I’ve learned in this past few years of studying as an IT students, I’ve known that IT is an helping tool for the business industry to progress and prosper .
All of the success in the business and in the field of technology is not by luck but with the proper, appropriate and correct management and planning. But as of this moment we will tackle about essentiality of having a good plan in both the business and in the Information Systems area. When we talks about planning it is a crucial task. Its because of some factors to be considered such as long time for hardware delivery, the difficulty of software development and the preparation needed for training and implementation have all demanded advance planning. This planning task has been primarily technical, specifically focuses on hardware and software and its relationship into the business industry. It is a preparation of one business or one system how to improve one's organization for the days or years to come. It is trying to respond in the changes and challenges that blocks the way of success. It is strategical approach of new ideas, new techniques, new business strategies and new systems, which intentionally gives a positive impacts in the business and organizations. For instance, the business makes a plan first before implementing something, like purchasing the new system for the new accounting system. Before the system may come in to reality it must to pass through different and formal process, the request must be done in the sequential and documentary way, like stating the purpose, the benefits, people involve , cost and many more to consider just to be approved. And for some like small business before they have a new machine it would be studied first if the cost would be worth to take the risk, and become the cause of the delay. After the evaluation if it really not approved, the owner would ask for any alternative that is low cost but functional though not so good in quality and performance as long as it fits on the budget, they will go for it, but still before it come to reality it passed to a long process and studied well by all concern. What I want to say is that planning done properly to find its effectiveness and usefulness in any organization. The way to success is the proper way f planning , predicting the problems that may result destruction and failure of the organization by having strategical solutions and plan to fight it up.
However, to elaborate and make a clearer view about the topic, we must first define and expose its real meaning that define by the author.
-Information System (IS) Today, James O'Brien,2003.McGraw Hill Company Inc.,
Information System can be any organized combination of people, hardware, software, communication networks and data resources that collects, transforms and disseminate information in an organization. While Business plan is a formal statement of a set of business goals, the reason why they are believed attainable and the plan reaching those goals.
-www.wikipedia.com
Business is first established than Information Technology (IT). Filipino started trading through barter system until such time that we learned to use for business transaction. In regards on the widely spread of business throughout the globe, managing information files was done manually until during 1970’s. In part of this year, information workers exceeded 50% of the work force. This is due of bigger and longer the company operates the larger documentation files stored and processed, although in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s. “IT” hardly exist still its compatibility and usability was not yet disseminated well. They were started using computer for data processing applications, their impact was comparatively modest. This was all because this change could not come too quickly to satisfy user needs. But, still people tried so hard to make things possible in which after late 1960’s, Information work grew rapidly. Through this responds we now make use IT resources effectively and efficiently.
Nowadays, proper designation and implementation of the Information Systems (IS) will become a big factor to the business prosperity. That is why Business plan correlates with Information System Plan.
The both elements are very important and specials in an organization. With the aid of this two, the business will prosper. Proper handling of information system will help in decision making while having a good business plan that will lead you where your business is going, it will be your map in your journey to successful business. It might be the road to taken be not so smooth but having a good business plan to address and overcome the circumstances that comes along the way. That is the main purpose of the planning, planning for the future.

How does IS help the business world?
1. It help in company's decision-making. Because it gives an accurate, timely and usable output of all financial statement of account and other financial reports and ledger. It also provide a more comprehensive graph that identifies the growth and downfall of the business operations and profit. The graph also see to it what period is the peak season and when it is not, when and where to produce and reproduce a product.
2. It makes the nature of job simplified and categories into specific job description. With regards on the job specification in the company in regards to Information System, it makes the nature of job for one personnel to furnish a more precise and a better performance in regards to its job, it will minimize multi-tasking. This will keep time the personnel to focus in one specific job.
3. Making use of latest technological trends. The newest technology you have the coolest, this is the motto of all the techie people says but in business not at all times, why? Is is because in the business world making use or purchasing new system would be very costly and complicated. Acquiring new system needs a proper preparation and planning. But we should not regard the facts that a having new systems will help addressing the company problems when regards to company transactions.
Components of IS Plan
1. Equipment 6. Financial Projections
2. Software System 7. Staff Development
3. Development Projects 8. Alternative Technology Projections
4. Database Plans 9. Organizational Design
5. Telecommunications Plan 10. Alternative Business Projection

Differentiate Information System Plan into Business Plan
Business plan has been identified as a summary of how a business owner, manager, or entrepreneur intends to organize an entrepreneurial endeavor and implement activities necessary and sufficient for the venture to succeed. Business plan is being used as Venture capital, Public offerings, while within corporations it includes Fundraising, Total quality management, Management by objective and Strategic planning.
When we talk about Venture Capital it denotes about two things: Business plan contests which provide a way for venture capitals to find promising projects while venture capital assessment of business plans focus on qualitative factors such as team. This entire collective investment scheme is a way of investing money with others to participate in a wider range of investments than feasible for most individual investors, and to share the costs and benefits of doing so. However, venture capital fund refers to a pooled investment vehicle which means that, primarily invests the financial capital of third-party investors in enterprises that are too risky for the standard capital markets or bank loans. Other capitalist are invested into small and less mature companies but expect so much in return, this happen because its one way of taking over the management or another way around but with purely the reason on investments return. Furthermore, venture capital investments are generally made as cash in exchange for shares in the invested company. It is typical for venture capital investors to identify and back companies in high technology industries such as biotechnology and ICT (information and communication technology).
Aside from being a business-minded you have a responsibility to have a public offerings which makes potential investors evaluation on perspectives of issuing company. IT is having informed the public of the issues that mainly concern on the people's involvement. Example of it is fund raising is the primary purpose for many business plans, since they are related to the inherent probable success/failure of the company risk. It fails when the number of availing the service are availed the fund raising but the return of investment is not sufficient nor never achieve in their target sales this is means company lose which mean that the strategy is not so effective. 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. The basis of TQM is to reduce the errors produced during the manufacturing or service process, increase customer satisfaction, streamline supply chain management, aim for modernization of equipment and ensure workers have the highest level of training. Less error means near into perfection and so closes in to the peak of success and satisfaction.

Information System Plan corporate with three Framework:
1. Stage of Growth
Identification and initial investment it is somewhat the beginning use of the new system. Experimentation and learning will follow. All of this steps help the corporation categorizing the stages of growth, how the business grow.

2. Critical Success Factors (CSF) is the term for an element that is necessary for an organization or project to achieve its mission. It is a critical factor or activity required for ensuring the success of your business. The term was initially used in the world of data analysis, and business analysis. For example, a CSF for a successful Information Technology (IT) project is user involvement.
3. Business Systems Planning

Business System Planning (BSP)

It is another popular methodology for system planning which developed and marketed by IBM. The basic philosophy of BSP is that data is a corporate resource. As such, it should be managed from an overall organizational view point, that it can be best serve the organization’s objectives and support its decision making activities.

The steps in the BSP study

1. Gaining commitment. Commitment is actually having people willing to commit themselves for the project they are the: a study sponsor (who are the top executive of the organization), team leader (one of the top executive who is assigned to lead the project) and members of the team. The team leader and members commits themselves to build the project. The final study recommendation would be presented into study sponsor, for further reviews and ask approval to proceed.

2. Preparing for the Study. This preparation involves crating the study schedule, making out the list of executives to be interviewed, gathering reference materials, location and equipping a meeting room, and so on.

3. Starting the Study. First, objectives must be presented by the sponsor. It reviews initial preparations. To established technical environment, the overview of the company’s information Systems is presented by the chief Information Systems executives.

4. Defining Business Process. Identifies and describes all the processes of the business, such as product development, purchasing, marketing and receiving.

5. Defining Business Data. The data used in the company will be categorized into logical data classes. The latter is the information needed to be tracked such as vendors, customers, parts, machines, and so on.

6. Designing Business Data. Defining information architecture of the organization. The architecture shows the relationship between data classes processes and IS. Data created in one system used in another is identified that the subsystems can be identified either “create” subsystem or “usage” subsystem.

7. Analyzing Current System Support. From the study and information gather above, the team can discover which processes receive no formal systems support which receives support, where possible redundant system exist, where shared information systems are possible.

8. Interviewing Executives. The purposes of interview are: to verify the organization; to determine the needed information by these executives; to uncover their problems and priorities.

9. Defining Findings and conclusions. The huge amount of material gathered from research and organizational information, interviews, summarized relationship of processes and data classes and so forth. This all summarized information help in determining the corporate information architecture.

10. Determining architecture Priorities. The team describes the order in which sales are to be developed the highest priority systems or subsystems are then described in considerable detail for evaluation by the study sponsor.

11. Reviewing Information Resource Management. Having a thorough probing and scrutinizing the business process, the team now study the company's information systems management policies in order to identifies objectives, financial, applications and data.

12. Developing Recommendations And an Action Plan. This step is producing the final set and recommendation and action plan.

13. Reporting Results. In this stage the team hopes to gain approval from the study sponsor to proceed with this recommendation and action plan.

14. Overview of follow-up activities. BSP manual stresses the importance various people including the users. The manual also describes various aspects of the follow-up activities such as implementing changes, maintaining and refining the architecture developing the first system.

4. Investment Strategy Analysis
This is all about having a planning where the money should be invested which at the same will make the turn-over double or more. This is thinking all possible event that might in the business, and tried to address it.

Significant of 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 ), PEST analysis (Political, Economic, Social, and Technological), STEER analysis (Socio-cultural, Technological, Economic, Ecological, and Regulatory factors), and EPISTEL (Environment, Political, Informatic, Social, Technological, Economic and Legal). All possible factors are being held together and tried to come a solution to address all of this. This is the way of having a strategize action on the future that held to shield the company for the possible circumstances that brings the company at stake. Strategic Plan is your wiping tool in cleansing up your way in the future.

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.

a.) 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.

b.) 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.

c.) 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.

d.) 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.

e.) 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.

Business Plans and IS Plan written primarily for use within the company generally stresses the benefits that will result from implementation of the plan. These may include improved and more consistent performance, improved coordination and consistency among various segments of the company, greater ability to measure performance, empowerment of the work force, and a better motivated and educated work force. The plan provides a comprehensive framework and direction for ongoing operations.

It is also use to identify the company's strengths and weaknesses, potential problems, and emerging issues. They set forth performance standards on which expectations will be based, and clearly define goals and objectives to allow for coordination and better communication between all company areas. All these elements are taking impart in the industry because it is their map for giving a clearer view about the future struggles and difficulties. All of this is commonly use by the organization, because without this is like putting yourself in war without bringing any weapon to defend yourself, it surely kills you without a fight. Having no Strategic Plan and business Plan is a suicidal, you are putting the company at stake. Therefore, always be vigilant and always be prepared, by doing this will be key to succeed.

Resources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_plan
http://www.tdan.com/view-articles/5262

Fritzielaine A. Barcena

Before we discuss further,lets define first what is Business Plan, its purposes and objectives..
It 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.
According to the unknown author, a business plan can be difficult, as the definition might be different for every organization. A business plan, in its simplest form, will usually define where you want your business to be within a certain period of time (usually five years) and how you plan on getting there. A business plan is as important for starting a business as blueprints are for building your house. When starting a new business, writing a business plan is an important first step to getting started. A business plan will lay out the direction for the future of your company and begin to establish standards for success. A complete business plan should include five-year financial projections. These projections will assist investors with making decisions about your business and help you to know how much funding you will need to get things rolling. A business plan should define how you would like to operate your business. This includes describing the management team, the marketing strategy, and the methods in which you will interact with customers. A business plan might project a strategy that reflects the management style of the founders of the business. The definition should be clear but flexible. Business plans are developed for many purposes. One company might be looking for funding from investors. Another company might be looking for a loan from a bank. Your company might just need to plan out the company’s strategy to make sure it is successful. Whatever the case, every business needs a business plan.
Business Plan also defines as a detailed description of a new or existing business, including the company's product or service, marketing plan, financial statements and projections and management principles, require a plan to be implemented. A document that spells out a company's expected course of action for a specified period usually includes a detailed listing and analysis of risks and uncertainties. For the small business, it should examine the proposed products, the market, the industry, the management policies, the marketing policies, production needs and financial needs. Frequently, it is used as a prospectus for potential investors and lenders.
A business plan has three primary functions:

1. To serve as an Action Plan
2. To serve as a Road Map
3. To serve as a Sales Tool

Action Plan. A business plan can help to move you to action. You may have been thinking for years about starting a business or engaging in some venture, but the process may seem too daunting, too large and too complicated. A business plan will help you to pull apart the pieces of starting a business and examine each piece by itself. So instead of one large problem, you have a sequence of smaller problems. And by solving the small problems, the large problem is automatically solved. So writing a business plan can help to move you to action by breaking down a seemingly insurmountable task (starting a business) into many smaller, less intimidating tasks.

Road Map. Once you have started your business, a business plan can be an invaluable tool to help keep you on track and moving in the direction you want to go. In the hurley-burley of daily business, it is very easy to lose sight of your objectives and goals -- a business plan can help to keep you focused. A business plan can also serve to help others to understand your vision, including suppliers, customers, employees, friends, and family.

Sales Tool. Perhaps most importantly, a business plan can serve as a sales tool. You will probably need outside financing to start your business, and a business plan is the tool you need to convince investors to come on board. You may also want and need concessions from suppliers or customers -- a business plan can help you get them. Finally you may need to convince family members, or even yourself, that your ideas will bear fruit. A well-written business plan can serve to sell people close to you on the benefits of proceeding with your concept.

What is Information System Planning?

According to Somendra Pant and Cheng Hsu, Information Systems Planning, or Planning for information systems, as for any other system,it “begins with the identification of needs. In order to be effective, development of any type of computer-based system should be a response to need--whether at the transaction processing level or at the more complex information and support systems levels. Such planning for information systems is much like strategic planning in management. Objectives, priorities, and authorization for information systems projects need to be formalized. The systems development plan should identify specific projects slated for the future, priorities for each project and for resources, general procedures, and constraints for each application area. The plan must be specific enough to enable understanding of each application and to know where it stands in the order of development. Also the plan should be flexible so that priorities can be adjusted if necessary. King (King, 1995) in his recent article has argued that a strategic capability architecture - a flexible and continuously improving infrastructure of organizational capabilities – is the primary basis for a company's sustainable competitive advantage. He has emphasized the need for continuously updating and improving the strategic capabilities architecture.” -

I can say that the use of information technology in business strategies helps achieve competitive advantage of the organization in the global marketplace. This is because IS encouraging the sharing of knowledge across business units enhances competency. Information systems achieve great efficiencies by automating parts of the business processes. When the manual system poses threats to security and reliability of data due to redundancy, the automated system can bring fast, accurate, more reliable outputs which could then be utilized not just by one functional area in the company but to all that is concerned with the information being processed..From the definitions stated above, since that Information System Planning is a process for developing a strategy and plans for aligning information systems with the business strategies of an organization, and that business plan is formal statement of a set of business goals, the reasons why they are believed attainable, and the plan for reaching those goals. Both are essential to the development of an organization. It can make or break an organization. And as during our lectures, with proper business planning in lined with proper strategic IS plan, an organization may bloom. And as to what the both are naturally related with, well, both deals with proper Time Management and Planning for the betterment of an organization.

Reference:
http://www.business-plan-success.com/Articles/BusinessPlanDefinition/
http://ezinearticles.com/?Business-Plan---Purpose-and-Objectives&id=445062