What should be the nature of the relationship between the business plan and the IS plan?

Business Plan

Before knowing the nature of the relationship between business plan and IS plan, let's first define the two for better understanding. According to wikipedia, business plan is 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. For my understanding, upon hearing business plan, it is planning about the business. Meaning, plan to which pertaining to attain certain goal for the company. 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.

In the hyper-competitive environment of today, there is perhaps nothing more important than planning and specifically developing a business plan. In any organization, there are many different types of plans – financial, human resource, marketing, production and sales.These plans may be short-term or long-term, strategic or operational, and varying greatly in scope. In spite of the differences in scope and coverage, each plan has a common purpose: to provide guidance and structure on a continuing basis for managing the organization in a rapidly changing hypercompetitive environment.

In this era of planning and intense competition among nonprofits for funds and market share, increasing competition between for profits and nonprofits, and increasing opportunities and pressures for nonprofits to collaborate with other non-profits as well as with business corporations, a business plan becomes an integral part of strategically managing an organization. By describing all the relevant external and internal elements involved in managing the organization, the business plan integrates the functional plans such as finance, human resources, and marketing, providing a road map for the future of the organization. There are various types of nonprofit ventures that may require a business plan such as a commercial venture attempting to raise net revenues for the nonprofit as well as ventures that directly address the mission of the organization and may not generate profits from sales but still need adequate support.

A business plan is usually read by a variety of stakeholders, and often has many different purposes. It needs to be comprehensive enough to address the issues and concerns of advisors, bankers, funders, community members, foundations, corporations, individual donors, government program officers, and affected client groups. Generally, the purpose of a business plan is to: obtain financial resources; obtain other resources; develop strategic alliances; and/or provide direction and guidance for the organization. While a business plan can serve several purposes, its most frequent use is to obtain financial resources. A well developed business plan then is important as it: (1) provides guidance to the organization in decision making and organizing the direction of the company; (2) indicates the viability of an organization in the designated market; and (3) serves as a vehicle in obtaining financing.

Given the importance and purpose of a business plan, it is imperative that it be comprehensive and covers in depth all aspects of the organization. The plan will be read by a variety of individuals, each of who is looking for a certain level of detail. The business plan can be divided into three primary areas, each of which has several sections. The first primary area, while the shortest, is perhaps the most significant, particularly when the purpose is to secure financing. This area consists of the title page, table of contents, and executive summary. The title page should contain the following information: (1) the name, address, telephone, fax, and e-mail numbers of the organization; (2) the name and position of the principle individuals in the organization; (3) three to four sentences briefly describing the nature of the organization and the purpose of the business plan; and (4) a statement of confidentiality such as “this is confidential business plan number which cannot be reproduced without permission.” This statement is important, as each numbered business plan needs to be accounted for by recording the person and organization of the individual receiving it and the date of receipt. The table of contents is perhaps the easiest part of the business plan to develop. It should follow the standard format with major sections and appendixes (exhibits) indicated along with the appropriate page numbers. The final part of the first primary area of the business plan – the executive summary – is the most important and most difficult to develop. This no more than three page summary is frequently used to determine if the entire business plan is worth reading and analyzing. The executive summary then affects if more detailed attention will be given to the plan. Given its importance, the executive summary should be written last and be written and rewritten until it highlights the organization in a concise, convincing manner covering the key points in the business plan. The executive summary should emphasize the three most critical areas for the success of the organization. In order of importance, these are the characteristics, capabilities, and experience of the management team; the nature and degree of innovativeness of the product or service and its market size and characteristics; and the expected results over the next three years. The second primary area of the business plan is the essence of the plan which contains the following sections: description of the organization, description of the area of service, marketing plan, financial plan, organization plan, operations plan, and summary. This area should be self contained, flowing smoothly from the description of the organization section to the summary section. The first section in this second primary area – the description of the organization – describes in detail the past, present, and future of the organization. The person reading the business plan needs to understand the history of the organization, its present size and scope, and its future over the next three years. The mission statement of the organization needs to be stated and show how this guides the organization. It is also important to clarify the tax status of the organization and especially if there is IRS approval for tax-exempt status. Following the organization section comes the description of the area of service. This section is important as it puts the organization in its proper context and competitive position. This section gives a historical overview of the service area, its present situation in terms of size and offerings, and its future outlook. A particularly important part of this section is competitive analysis, which should describe the strengths and weaknesses of each major competitor with respect to the corresponding strengths and weaknesses of the organization. This section should conclude with a forecast of the size and future outlook of the service area. The fourth section begins the three parts dealing with the important functional aspects of the organization. The first, the marketing plan describes the nature of the product or service and how it will be distributed, priced, and promoted to achieve the amount of activity indicated each year for the next three years. Since everyone realizes that marketing is involved in achieving the necessary sales, each marketing aspect should be discussed in detail in as comprehensive terms as possible. Given the close relationship, the financial plan follows logically. This section revolves around the preparation of four basic statements: the sources and uses of funds statement, the pro-forma income statements for at least the next three years, the pro-forma cash flow statements for at least the next three years, and the pro-forma balance sheets for at least the next three years. If the organization has already been in operation then past income statements and balance sheets should be in the appendix and discussed in the financial plan section The sixth section – the operational plan – describes overall how the organization will operate. This section should focus on the flow of work enabling the reader to understand the process that occurs from the time an order is received until the resource is delivered. This provides understanding of the overall operation of an organization. Primary area two concludes with a summary. This short section merely summarizes the preceding sections by highlighting the most important points and concludes with any requests of the reader. Following this core of the business plan comes primary area three – the appendices or exhibits. These provide supporting and additional information amplifying the material presented in primary area two. Typical appendices include: resumes of principals, markets statistics, market research data, competitors brochures and price lists, and leases and contracts.

Given the amount of time and effort needed to develop a good business plan, it is important that the plan be carefully implemented and used to provide guidance for the organization in all areas of its operation. The business plan will be most effective when controls are simultaneously implemented and the progress toward the established objectives is reviewed on a regular basis. Since the organization is operating in a competitive, changing environment, it is important that the organization be sensitive to changes in its field or industry, and market, and make the appropriate changes in the business plan as needed.
This will allow the business plan to be most effective in successfully guiding the organization over time.

ref: http://www.nationalcne.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/feature.display/feature_id/56/index.cfm?CFID=34311&CFTOKEN=48125333

IS Plan

IS plan for me is a plan in which it focuses on the improvements of the system in a certain organization. It is a process for developing a strategy and plans for aligning information systems with the business strategies of an organization. Most organization's survival now depends on IT. Planning of its effective use is a matter of organizational life and death. A variety of approaches, tools and mechanisms available for IS planning. In a traditional view, it is determining what decisions to make in the future. While in a better view, it is developing a view of the future that guides decision making today. Planning is different from making a strategy but I think it is also good over planning. Strategy making is stating the direction in which you want to go and how you intend to get there. Now, there are different types of planning. Strategic, tactical and operational. 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?". 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.

ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_planning


Tactical Planning is the process of taking the strategic plan and breaking it down into specific, short term actions and plans. The relative length of the planning horizon will vary from one market to another but typically the strategic plan will cover a period greater than three years while the tactical plan covers the period from today through to the end of year three. The content of any business plan will depend on why the plan is being produced. Some plans are for internal use only and act as a common reference during the preparation of budgets and appraisals. Some plans are basically sales documents aimed at persuading banks to provide loans and investors to provide equity. The process of producing a useable tactical plan is not easy as some flexibility is required to allow response to unplanned events. There are a large variety of strategic planning models and organisations that provide strategic planning consulting. Some of these are useful and can be used a check lists to ensure completeness and as facilitators to ask the awkward questions that people would prefer to leave unanswered. It is important that the tactical plan should be checked to ensure it is aligned with the strategic plan and that all activities are aimed at moving closer to the goals defined in the strategic plan. It is very easy for the tactical plan to diverge at a tangent because of someone's interests or disagreement with the strategic plan.

ref:http://www.businesscoachingexecutive.com/tactical_planning.html

An operational planning is a subset of strategic work plan. It describes short-term ways of achieving milestones and explains how, or what portion of, a strategic plan will be put into operation during a given operational period, in the case of commercial application, a fiscal year or another given budgetary term. An operational plan is the basis for, and justification of an annual operating budget request. Therefore, a five-year strategic plan would need five operational plans funded by five operating budgets. Operational plans should establish the activities and budgets for each part of the organisation for the next 1 – 3 years. They link the strategic plan with the activities the organization will deliver and the resources required to deliver them. An operational plan draws directly from agency and program strategic plans to describe agency and program missions and goals, program objectives, and program activities. Like a strategic plan, an operational plan addresses four questions:

* Where are we now?
* Where do we want to be?
* How do we get there?
* How do we measure our progress?

The OP is both the first and the last step in preparing an operating budget request. As the first step, the OP provides a plan for resource allocation; as the last step, the OP may be modified to reflect policy decisions or financial changes made during the budget development process. Operational plans should be prepared by the people who will be involved in implementation. There is often a need for significant cross-departmental dialogue as plans created by one part of the organisation inevitably have implications for other parts.

Operational plans should contain:

* clear objectives
* activities to be delivered
* quality standards
* desired outcomes
* staffing and resource requirements
* implementation timetables
* a process for monitoring progress.

ref:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operational_planning

In all the things we do, planning is a part of an activities for it guides every steps that can give satisfaction to our work. And we can't deny the fact that planning is so difficult. Here comes now the relationship between business plan and IS plan. It's because business goals and systems plans need to align.Strategic systems plans need to align with business goals and support those objectives. It will be difficult if CIO is not part of senior management. Technologies are rapidly changing. And continuous planning based on monitoring and experimenting new technologies. Certain companies need portfolios rather than projects. It is for the evaluation on more than their individual merit. On h.ow they fit into other projects and how they balance the portfolio of projects. In planning, infrastructure is included in which the infrastructure development is difficult to fund. It is often done under the auspices of a large application project. One of the challenge for this is to develop improved applications and improve infrastructure over time. Systems planning has become business planning, not just a technology issue.Responsibility needs to be joint. It is better done by a full partnership of C-level officers. Other planning issue is planning culture in which the systems planning must fit.