fast forward ..., you were hired and have been tasked to develop a strategic information systems plan for a company. The company officers have extended an invitation for you to meet with them to discuss the direction of the company. Before this meeting, they have asked that you provide a list of questions with some explanation about the "why" of the question so they can be prepared, thus maximizing the output from this meeting.

Develop a list of questions you would ask the officers of the company and give an explanation and justification for each question. (1000 words)

Here in this world, in all you do should have what we call plan. Like us, we are created by GOD because He has a plan to each and every one of us. In other words, the purpose in which we are going to do as we are living here on earth. It is also the same with all the things that we've seen and touch. They have also plan and purpose why they are here. Like in an organization, the people responsible for the establishments of that kind of an organization have plans and purpose why he/she built that.

Strategic information systems planning ( SlSP) is the process of deciding the objectives for organizational computing and identifying potential computer applications which the organization should implement. The primary objectives of systems planning were to improve communication with users, to increase top management support, to better forecast resources, to determine more opportunities for improving the MIS department, and to identify new and higher payback computer applications.

SISP involves understanding what the business goals are and identifying how IS can support those goals by delivering benefits. And to do that, each should understand what the business is all about. Includes also the strategies and purpose. Another thing is to know what IS does the company have. To know if it is effective or not and if it is meeting the business needs. Another thing to consider is what the technological opportunities exist and how could the new IT support the business. IS should be an integrated resource within the organisation which contributes to the organisation’s core competencies which may result in sustainable competitive advantage.

In an organization, strategic information systems plan (SISP) is really important because it is a tool in which the organization can attain their successful development and improvement of the system. By doing that, of course all the people involved should gather to discuss what to do. And one way to understand what will be doing is the guidelines which are the questions that everyone should talk about and discuss. For me, these are some of the questions to consider:

1.) What are the business mission, objectives, and goals?

Here, it analyses the processes for all the data needed. It will identify the data currently required to perform the processes. It describes the overall information system architecture comprised of databases and applications as well as the installation schedule of individual systems.

2.) What will be the expected output of this project you want to have?

After knowing their business mission, objectives and goals, it should be given an emphasis of what the company wants to have in a certain project and to know exactly the expected output or finish product so that it will be concentrated to what is its goal to achieve.

3.) Who are the persons involved in this project?

The PEOPLE Issue represents the readiness of the organization to absorb technology and awareness factors. This if overlooked can be a major cause of failure for any plan during the implementation phase. By this, everyone will know all the persons they will be working with or dealing with so that in times of there will be something wrong happen, they used to know who to ask or to talk to fix such problem.

4.) Does your company willing to provide sufficient budget either it will be big or small project?

Factors that become critical at the stage of doing projects are the availability of budget. All plans should be supported through a justification on the basis of cost savings, (but, of course) opportunity cost and strategic rationale like competitive advantage, perception etc. amongst other factors. Asking this is a big help because budget is the mainly needed for it is in here in which the project will be going through whatever it takes. It is the one in which why certain project will be establish or is established.

5.) Ready to reengineer?

It provides techniques or building enterprise models, data models, and process models. These form a comprehensive knowledge base which then creates and maintains information systems.

6.) How much is the allotted time for the project?

Persons involved should have to discuss about how much time will be consume to take for this project. By knowing this, each can have a managed time and how they will use it to finish certain project.

7.) How company deal with the changes?

Changes here means that everyone should study also of the existing TECHNOLOGY platform within the company, the infrastructure, the state and format of the data and information present. Along with all this, the governance of technology is also something to watch out for. It becomes important to manage the chaos that would naturally result from too many ‘technology’ cooks in a company. The standards, responsibility and approval structure in selecting and implementing technology choices have to be clear and specific in order to avoid pain of integration and obsolescence.


Questions above are just few to mention to have an effective strategic plan. Improved strategic information systems planning (SISP) is the most critical issue facing information systems executives. Because the purpose of SISP is to identify the most appropriate targets for automation and to schedule their installation, SISP has the potential to make huge contributions to businesses and other organizations. Effective SISP can help organization use information systems to reach business goals, a major objective of senior IS executives. It can also enable organizations to use information system so significantly impact their strategies. However, the failure to carefully carry out SISP can result both in lost opportunities and the waste of expensive IS resources.

Google is a highly successful Internet business. Recently they have broadened their scope with a multitude of new tools. Research Google’s business model and answer the following questions below. You may add additional information not included in these questions.

Questions :
Explain Google’s business model.
1. Who are their competitors?
2. How have they used information technology to their advantage?
3. How competitive are they in the market?
4. What new services do they offer?
5. What makes them so unique?
6. How competitive are they in the international market?

Google is one of the Internet business which provides really lots of information that is very helpful for us people living in this world. We are very lucky this time because of the technology, all the works are made easier and fast. All that we want to know around the world is attained by us by just a simple clicking of the mouse in the computer. Even talking to our loved ones wherever they are are made easier by the Internet. Before, I preferred to use yahoo to search but I find it less information than the Google. So, I frequently visited Google than yahoo.

Primary Competitors of Google:

1.Microsoft
2.Yahoo
Competitive Advantage:
Google is a company that has built a single very large, custom computer. It's running their own cluster operating system. They make their big computer even bigger and faster each month, while lowering the cost of CPU cycles. It's looking more like a general purpose platform than a cluster optimized for a single application.
While competitors are targeting the individual applications Google has deployed, Google is building a massive, general purpose computing platform for web-scale programming.
This computer is running the world's top search engine, a social networking service, a shopping price comparison engine, a new email service, and a local search/yellow pages engine.
Ref: http://blog.topix.com/archives/000016.html

What makes them so unique?
One thing that has become evident to me is that Google grows in an organic fashion. Google develops tools that are internally useful and then releases them to the world. Google does not develop products to sell to the world. Google does not have external contracts, at least in the traditional sense.
Google is obviously best known for search and for ads associated with search. This is in essence Google’s one true product. It is the one feature Google developed for the outside world. When Google developed search it was no different from a small company. It is what Google has done since then that makes Google different.
Google doesn’t answer to any external power. They don’t have anyone they have to deliver a product to. There is no contract with a deadline. Due to not having any external dependencies, Google can continuously iterate over a product until it reaches a state of near perfection. It can stay in internal testing as long as Google wants and no one is going to care. See Gmail, Google Maps, etc. This then allows Google to use the perfect form of the agile process. Continuous iterations and testing and development, continues improvement. Then as Google sees fit, release the products. As they get better and better, more people use them and more money from ads come in. It’s beautiful.
It’s also unlikely any other company is going to be able to pull this off. Google hit on the formula for ads before anyone else. They now have such a commanding lead in that arena that to compete with them you need deep pockets of money of your own. That makes it difficult to launch a company and follow Google’s lead of avoiding external dependencies and having the near perfect product development process.
What new services do they offer?

As I searched Google, I found TiSP. Google's new FREE in-home wireless broadband service. TiSP in-home wireless broadband is:
Free, fast and highly reliable
Easy to install -- takes just minutes
Vacuum-sealed to prevent water damage
Google Voice, a new service which integrates phone features with Gmail. Google Voice will allow users to receive transcripts of voice-mail messages in their email in-boxes, which makes them searchable.

By just seeing Google's business in the web, specially the new services they offer, you can conclude that they are continuing to progress and have develop more and more features and services that could help many people in everyday activities of their life to make them easier for a certain task to undergo. This is one proof we can say that we are in the era of technology.