case study for it strategic planning academic assignment -

2009

University Name

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[CASE STUDY FOR IT STRATEGIC PLANNING] The case includes the literature review, SWOT analysis and program flow chart for an IT product with

relevance to its strategic planning.

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Table of Contents

LITERATURE REVIEW OF STRATEGIC PLANNING ........................................................................................... 3

Strategic Planning: .................................................................................................................................... 3

Introduction: ............................................................................................................................................. 3

Review of Strategic Planning: ................................................................................................................... 3

The Perspective of Strategic Information Systems Planning ........................................................................ 5

Strengths ................................................................................................................................................... 5

Weakness .................................................................................................................................................. 6

Opportunity............................................................................................................................................... 7

Threats ...................................................................................................................................................... 7

Approach towards the Perisher Blue strategic plan ................................................................................. 8

Business Flow Chart ...................................................................................................................................... 9

REFERENCES ................................................................................................................................................ 10



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The result of planning should be effective, efficient, and economical...that is, suitable for the

intended purpose, capable of producing the desired results, and involving the least investment of

resources.

-Clark Crouch

LITERATURE REVIEW OF STRATEGIC PLANNING

Strategic Planning:

The planning activity is the one confronts the major strategic decisions that the organizations are

facing. A decision is not rendered strategic merely by being important. Strategic decisions or

issues fulfill the following criteria: Define the institution’s relationship to its

environment; generally take the whole organisation as the unit of analysis; Depend on inputs

from a number of functional areas; Provide direction for, and constraints on, administrative and

operational activities throughout the institution or organisation.

Introduction:

For developing strategies it is most important to know what is driving an industry and the forces

that can influence and are important in the future. To understand these forces we have to focus

on strategic planning in order to set the context and explain the origins and meaning of strategy

in the environment. Amazing things can happen when you have an IT strategy aligning business

and IT objectives. Everyone in your business will know that IT is successful. Budget fights are

eliminated because there is a direct tie between the IT work and the business results from IT.

Review of Strategic Planning:



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The importance and need for designing strategic planning systems to fit particular organisations

and their unique context has been widely addressed by renowned management writers. For

instance, (Morrisey 1996a, 1996b), a strategic planning consultant and author, repeatedly stresses

the need to customize the strategic thinking, long-range planning and tactical planning processes

to best fit the needs of an organisation. (Mintzberg 1993) suggests that planning differs

according to the structure of the organisation. For example, machine bureaucracies are more

likely to stress action planning, divisionalized firms emphasize performance targets and

entrepreneurial firms often use vision as a means of coordinating and focusing work.

Frederickson (1986) considered the effect that organisation structure might have on strategic

decision processes and concluded. IT industry is a wide term that under winds many sectors like

computer sciences, online systems, mobile commerce, online games, factory automation systems

and database management within organisations. For the proper maintenance of business

operations, IT strategic planning is of vital importance.

In reviewing of academic strategic planning the strategic issues are addressed in detail by

summarizing the strengths and weaknesses (internal) and opportunities and threats (external)

facing the organizations. In order to find strategic issues that hinder organisations to achieve

vision, it is necessary to identify the good and bad thing that can help the organisation. Further,

the specific barriers or impediments are described that can affect the resolution of identified

strategic issues within organization (Dr. Kion 2003). Over the last 30 years the organisations

have had an intermittent engagement with strategic planning, the cost has been lost momentum,

poor planning, confusion, wasted capital and demoralization all contributing to poor

organizational performance (Kotler 2000).

Empiric studies' findings indicate at a correlation between strategic planning and performance.

Nevertheless, the findings are mixed. A survey of twenty-six experimental studies enabled

(Miller and Cardinal 1994) to identify a significant positive connection between strategic

planning and small business performance. They state that on-line consumer behaviour research is

a new area of academic study in marketing. They state that most of the work in this area has been

done by practitioners and they strongly encourage further academic research and learning from

the data of on-line research. Following their motivation, an on-line questionnaire targeting

Internet users constituted the data collection instrument of the present study. (Barlow 1990) has



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discussed strengths and weaknesses in strategic planning. Strengths combine a top down

business analysis approach with a bottom up implementation strategy, it represents an integrated

methodology.

In the field of IT strategic planning, some formal representational ontology’s exist (Austin Tate,

1998), but are not, in our experience, expressive enough to adequately represent the strategies

identified in this project. Instead, we have taken the approach of authoring representations that

might best be described as pre formal, somewhat similar in format to the work of previous

researchers in this area.

The Perspective of Strategic Information Systems Planning

In order to put the planning for strategic information systems in perspective, the evolution of

information systems according to the three-era model of John Ward, et al. (1990) is pertinent.

Applications in the overall Data Processing (DP), Management Information Systems (MIS) and

Strategic Information Systems (SIS) area need to be planned and managed according to their

existing and future contribution to the business. A portfolio model derived from McFarlan (1984)

considers the contribution of IS/IT to the business now and in the future based on its industry

impact. Based on this model applications are divided into four categories, as shown here:

Strategic: Applications those are critical for future success.

Turnaround: Applications which may be of future strategic importance.

Factory: Applications which are critical to sustaining existing business.

Support: Applications which improve management and performance but are not critical

to the business.

Strengths

Perisher blue has the largest terrain i.e. its area is comprised of 12-km square. It has the

facilities of Perisher Valley, Smiggin Holes, Mount Blue Cow, and Guthega

It has the greatest number of lifts



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It contains the most reliable snow in Australia which is used for the skiing purposes and

has pre-eminent technology installed in its premises

A high quality customer service is its benchmark. Perisher has always strived for the

excellent and superior services for its customer.

It has produced an award winning ski slope master plan. It addresses the provision of ski

lifts and trails, buildings on the slopes, slope grooming operations including snowmaking

and supporting infrastructure such as power, communications and hydraulic services. It

also addresses the environmental management of the ski slopes, having regard to both

winter and summer periods.

Ease of access. It is consider as to be a key element of the Perisher Blue’s effort to be

Australia’s most excellent four- season destination mountain resort

Perisher caters the needs of broad range of customers from sight-seers to advanced level

skiers and snow-boarders.

Strong management which is committed to distinguish Perisher Blue by its competitor by

providing high standards of services to its customers

Perisher Blue has modern hardware and updated software systems to complement their

services.

Electronic email system is in place.

Weakness

In order for the resort to function at its optimal levels, all four skiing fields must interact

with each other. In fact the whole plan is based on the strategic approach in which one

part enforces the functioning of the other part, so if one area of the organization suffers it

will damage the performance of the whole organization

Lack of computerized ticketing platform, which cause lot of hassle to it’s visitors and

results in long quos.

Lack of use of computerized system efficiently and effectively of the operations are not

achieved through the currently installed hardware and software system



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Opportunity

IT infrastructure must be designed to hold planned visitation levels, be able to do so

under adverse conditions, and be of a standard that complements the world class facilities

in the village and on the mountain

State of the art IT infrastructure may be used to decreased customers hassle with dealing

the identification card and could increased customer satisfaction

The ski resort market is expected to remain strong with predictions of 2.0%, 3.0% and

4.6% growth over the next 25years. Keeping in view this long-term growth trend in the

ski market Perisher Blue can exploit the opportunities by having proper facilities in place.

In this way it’ll be able to capitalize on its services getting a larger share of growing

market.

Threats

The market is very competitive and numbers of competitors are providing services. Its

main competitor destinations are Canberra, Cooma, Berridale, charlotte pass, Mt beauty,

Hotham and falls creek

The chance of price war among competitor cannot be ruled out. Due to many competitors

there is a threat to company that competitors might low the price in order to attract more

visitors to their respective destination and which might result in loss of revenue due to

low price strategy in order to compete with the rivals

Failures of the IT can put whole system on halt. The company has been emphasizing

more and more on building computerized system but even a minor problem in on part of

the system can affect the whole operational process of the company adversely

The business is highly dependent on weather condition, high wind can reduced the

capacity of the lift but can also create sever issues when the show is artificial. So

unfavorable weather condition is always a big concern for the company.



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Approach towards the Perisher Blue strategic plan

Perisher Blue has already installed a state of the art IT equipment including both hardware and

software system but still company has not been able to cash it investment effectively and

efficiently. The company has a huge area of terrain under strategic plan which includes four

areas. The strategy company wants to adopt is by achieving the following objectives i.e. To

enable greater access to lifts and resort facilities, To ensure that the company’s technology

utilization is appropriate and is capable of managing the movement of visitors within the resort,

To ensure that business operations continue to achieve an effective and competitive level of

operation. The company has great expertise in artificial snowmaking and restaurants. IT has

never been core strength of this company. So I would recommend the company to outsource its

IT department to a company which has proven track record IT infrastructure development and

maintenance. This would certainly help company to focus more on its core business and let the

outsourcing company to take care of the IT system. The IT system can fixed computerized chip

on the skiing rode and this would help the visitors not to take out their gloves and get into hassle

for identification purpose and the customers can also be tracked through satellite system with the

help of this micro chip and this would also serves the purpose of the company to give their

customers a unique hassle free experience.

The potential suppliers for the Perisher blue could be as follows:

Hardware Software

IBM Microsoft

HP-Compaq IBM

Dell Oracle

Intel



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Business Flow Chart



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REFERENCES

McFarlan, F.W. (1984), “Information Technology Changes the Way You Compete,”

Harvard Business Review, pp. 98-105

Austin Tate (1998), A. Tate. Roots of SPAR - Shared planning and activity representation.

Knowledge Engineering Review, 13, 121-128.

Mintzberg, H. (1993), Structure in Fives: Designing Effective Organizations. Englewood

Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Miller and Cardinal (1994), The strategic planning process and performance relationship,

available at http://www.entrepreneur.com/tradejournals/article/165017895.html, (accessed at

04/09/2009)

Kotler, P. (2000), Marketing Management: Analysis, Planning, Implementation and Control,

Millennium edition, Prentice-Hall, Inc.

Fredrickson, J. (1986). “The Strategic Decision Process and Organization Structure.”

Academy of Management Review, Vol. 11, pp.280-296.Barlow, J.F. (1990), “Putting

Information Systems Planning Methodologies Into Perspective,” Journal of Systems

Management, pp. 6-9.

Dr. Kion (2003), ACADEMIC COLLEGE OR SCHOOL STRATEGIC PLANNING

REVIEW available on http://www.irweb3.ucf.edu/SPC/pdf/CollegeAcademicTemplate.pdf,

(accessed at 03/09/2009)



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Morrisey, G. (1996a). Morrisey on Planning: A Guide to Strategic Thinking, San Francisco:

Jossey- Bass Publishers

Morrisey, G. (1996b). Morrisey on Planning: A Guide to Long-Range Planning, San

Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.

Ward, John, Griffiths, Pat and Whitmore, Paul (1990), Strategic Planning for Information

Systems, John Wiley & Sons

