MIS2 - assign 2 =)

What should be the nature of the relationship between the business plan and the IS (information system) plan?

To be real honest, without the aid of our technology, I won't be able to know what a Business Plan and an IS plan is. Thanks to the Internet. But then in order to find the relationship of the two, knowing what PLAN (PLANNING) means would give a little help.

As Time-Management.com said, planning is one of the most important project management and time management techniques. Planning is preparing a sequence of action steps to achieve some specific goal. If you do it effectively, you can reduce much the necessary time and effort of achieving the goal.

A plan is like a map. When following a plan, you can always see how much you have progressed towards your project goal and how far you are from your destination. Knowing where you are is essential for making good decisions on where to go or what to do next.

A plan can play a vital role in helping to avoid mistakes or recognize hidden opportunities. Preparing a satisfactory plan of the organization is essential. The planning process enables management to understand more clearly what they want to achieve, and how and when they can do it.

A well-prepared business plan demonstrates that the managers know the business and that they have thought through its development in terms of products, management, finances, and most importantly, markets and competition.
Planning helps in forecasting the future, makes the future visible to some extent. It bridges between where we are and where we want to go. Planning is looking ahead.

Now that I am able to give what planning is and its importance. I think what Business Plan is would be the next.

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.

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.

Meanwhile, Information Systems Planning, or Planning for information systems, as for any other system, “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.” - Somendra Pant and Cheng Hsu.

From the definitions declared 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. Well, I hope I said it well and right.

References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_plan
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_information_system_plan
http://viu.eng.rpi.edu/publications/strpaper.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planning
http://www.time-management-guide.com/planning.html