AQA Information and Communication Technology/ICT4/Corporate IS Strategy

The IS strategy is part of the business strategy. The business strategy is a long-term plan showing where the business is going. It provides the long-term objectives for the business. Planning is very important for business survival.

A business strategy should consist of:


 * The business objectives in the mission statement
 * A SWOT analysis of the business (this shows the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of a business)
 * Substrategies for separate parts of the business (marketing, sales, operations, IS, etc.)

Obviously, we'll be focussing on the IS strategy. The IS strategy should be allocated resources and should be needs-led, not technology-led. (This means the IS strategy should be fulfilling the needs of the business, not just supplying the latest technology).

The IS strategy should consider:


 * Resources
 * People
 * Technology
 * Organisation
 * Threats to the business (as identified in the SWOT analysis)

Information flow
We can deduce 3 types of information flow in an organisation:


 * Strategic
 * Tactical
 * Operational

Many organisations rely on a constant flow of information, both up and down the layers of hierarchy. Information can flow either:


 * Formally (through meetings, etc.) – where the information flow is standardised and consistent
 * Informally (phone calls, discussions over the water cooler, etc.) – this is where the information flow does not follow a set of rules and can be inconsistently distributed, and therefore unreliable.

How information is dealt with is dependent on where the end-user is in the hierarchy.

Unless information has a free flow, there can be constraints on the way the information flows and it could be limited.

Personnel
As we discussed earlier on, most hierarchies can be broken down into 3 types.

As such, we have the following levels of the hierarchy making different decisions:


 * Senior management make the strategic decisions
 * Middle management make the tactical (or implementation) decisions
 * The workers make the operational decisions.

Or, what we're going to do, how we're going to do it, and the specifics of production.