I.T. STRATEGIC PLANNING

I.T POLICY AND STRATEGY

What are the external and internal influences for a private university? Describe briefly the influences that will affect the university strategic plan.

Ans. 1:

A university as an educational and corporate organisation has teaching and training as core ones among her primary activities, with students as a key component of the organisational structure. The external and internal influences of universities especially a private university can be summarized as follows: having each of the categories further divided to positive and negative types. USGPC (2004) explained that the positive and negative for external influences are identified as the organisational opportunities and threats respectively, while for internal influences are strengths and weaknesses respectively also. This is what informs a strategic analysis known as SWOT analysis (Dyson, 2002).

Internal Influences (Strength and Weaknesses)

Strengths:

a.       The university’s positive reputation and good image in the external community.

b.      Positive customers’ relationship; i.e. good relationship with the students and clients that patronize the University for Consultancy purposes.

c.       Past goodwill: Successful graduation rates, and accredited programs.

d.      Pragmatic students’ support.

e.       Faculty and Staff responsiveness and support.

f.       Campus characteristics: the size, facilities, friendliness and safety.

g.      Diverse students’ bodies.

h.      Active external boards and board of directors

Weaknesses:

a.       Match between research expectation and support.

b.      Organisation operational bureaucracy.

c.       Monetary and fiscal uncertainty.

d.      High and unequal workload faculty & staff.

e.       Hiring and retaining faculties

External influences (Opportunities and Threats)

Opportunities:

a.       Active partnership in the support of the university initiatives.

b.      Expanding opportunities for students’ placement and internship.

c.       External community and University relationship.

d.      Interest in global initiatives

e.       Technological advances

Threats:

a.       Investors financing crisis.

b.      Focus swinging between numerical achievement and qualitative achievement.

c.       Negative public perception about being private that inform being more money conscious more than quality of the graduates.

d.      Development of another university in the area (New entrant into the business).

e.       Lack of historical knowledge about the University.

In drawing the university strategic plan, all the influencing factors must be taken into consideration, however must importantly are:

a.       Investors’ financing: Since it is a private institution, funding must be well planned, hence, making it a public corporation for its shareholding to be available to public offering will be a good strategy.

b.      Diverse students’ bodies: In order to give an international image to the school, it should be made accommodating to international students giving an enabling environment that will allow inter-cultural relationship, with an adoption of a unified language like English to make the learning and living comfortable for the students.

c.       Hiring and retaining faculties: The university need to make a good package in cash and career development for the hired faculty members in order to prevent them from incessant leaving for greener pasture.

Que. 2:

List the core competencies of a computer centre in a university.  Describe the strategies how the computer centre can achieve those competencies.

Ans. 2:

Core competencies are the major and primary activities that the organisation must partake and exercise to achieve its mission and vision, and aims and objectives (Ward & Peppard, 2002).

Core competencies which are also known as the primary activities of a computer centre in a university are:

a.       Service and Maintenance

b.      Training

c.       Consultancy

In achieving these core competencies, there must be an exclusive inclusion of some support activities, adopting Value Chain Analysis in strategizing so as to achieve the core competencies (also known as primary activities).

Value Chain Analysis Model

Value Chain Analysis model (Adapted from Alternative Value ‘Configuration’ Model, Ward & Peppard, 2002).

The support activities that must be included by the computer centre to achieve the primary activities are:

a.       Human Resource Management: The members of staff must be enjoying time-to-time training after a sound recruitment exercise to keep them a head the changing nature of the information and technology field.

b.      IT infrastructure: The computer center must employ the up-to-date IT infrastructure to monitor the network traffic, optimize its efficiency and do appropriate analysis in a view of achieving better service delivery, thus maintains the IT platform used.

Que. 3:

Explain the role of policies in an organization, and why should an IT security policy be defined and disseminated to the staff of the organization.

Ans. 3:

Policies are meant to be integral part of any organisation irrespective of its area of operation; ranging from business organisations, health organisations, security or Information technology companies or institutes. Policies on the general note have the main role of providing direction and guiding decisions and actions in the particular area (Smith, 2002), it is a framework of rules and guiding principles designed to avoid negative effects on the organisation and equally seek positive results for the development of the organisation (Chrishakwe,2008 ).

Chrishakwe (2008) further stressed that Policies in isolation cannot be seen as solutions to organisational pitfalls if not supported by actions and laid down procedures. The actions to be taken in line with the drawn organisational policies are what are known as Strategy, therefore to achieve the organisational goals via its actualization of mission and vision; Policy and Strategy must be combined to achieve the desired end result.

Information Technology security policy should be well defined and disseminated to the staff of the organisation broadly to get informed about the common IT security problems which companies are facing on a daily basis. Danchev (2003) posited that building a good security policy provides the foundation for successful implementation of future security related projects, and this start by adequately informing the staff on their respective responsibilities on the general use of the company’s resources and being trained on how sensitive information must be handled.

The staff when being well informed about the IT security policy:

1.      will understand in detail the company’s terms of acceptable use as well as the listing of the prohibited activities,

2.       will develop the staff into participants in the company’s effort to secure its communication,

3.      will help in reducing the risk of any potential security breach through what is known as ‘human factor’ mistake,

4.      will enlighten the staff on proper usage of the internet, and strategies to avoid revealing information to unknown or unauthorized sources, and lastly,

5.      will help in defining the company’s critical assets for the staff,  highlight how to be protected and serve as a centralized document as far as Information Security Assets is concerned.

Que. 4:

There are several challenges that faced top management in preparing and implementing the strategic plan to transform the organization. Explain one example of a challenge that top management has to make preparation in an organization to ensure that the vision is achieved, and the objectives are met.

Ans. 4:

Historically, the early evolution of Information systems and its need to be integrated into organisational activities defined information systems in any organisation based on a stratified management activity which has strategic planning, management control and the operational control as the structural components (Ward & Peppard, 2002). Thus, the management pyramid depicts the Strategic Managers (e.g. CEO, HOD e.t.c) at the top of the organisational structure saddled with the responsibility of designing and implementing strategic plan in a view to transform the organisation.

One of major challenges faced by the top management which has to be solved so as to enable the actualization of the organisation’s vision and achievement of their aims is the ability to fully integrate the organisational infrastructure and processes, and the business strategy with the appropriate information strategy and complementary information systems, infrastructure and processes. This is solved using Strategic Alignment model (SAM) (Ward & Peppard, 2002).

For instance, a company that is into sales and marketing can employ the use of electronic payment-enabled websites to allow interested customers to make payment without being physically present in their companies, and the delivery is done at their doorstep. This briefly illustrates the integration of information systems and infrastructure to achieve the organisational infrastructure with the help of the underlying business strategy.

Que. 5:

Most organizations do strategic planning to become competitive. Prepare a strategic plan for UTI-MUU, a small IT Professional Development company based in Sintok to be ahead of her competitors. (Hint: Use one strategic planning methodology to answer this question).

Ans. 5: Strategic planning aims at making the business organisation competitive and to forge a head her competitors in the business market. For UTI-MUU which is a small IT Professional Development company based in Sintok, Business Re-engineering Process (BRP) will be suitable in re-positioning the business organisation, re-engineering the current strategies in use and to make it surviving in the competitive world.

This will be done after a clear cut understanding of the present business processes, hence, to start with, there must be process redesign, by vividly checking out the possibility of taking IT capabilities to provide new and innovative design possibilities, realigning business activities and their relationships to achieve performance breakthrough. The modus of BPR centres on formulation and implementation; attending to how the business is re-engineered to provide advantage, and how the processes can be improved to ensure the success of the strategy (Ward & Peppard, 2002).

In the stance of UTI-MUU, the firm is a professional development company that initially uses the common PCs for running, compiling, debugging and deployment of their developed software; therefore there must be an introduction of high-end computing terminal to enhance handling of sophisticated and complex automated information systems and software. This re-engineering process will lead to production of better software in the market, meeting users’ needs and satisfaction, and consequently poses the company ahead its competitors.

Secondly, the sales and marketing process of the company is yet to be supported by IT infrastructure, it is still done via office to office marketing strategy. Therefore, the use of e-Marketing will be introduced through the use of websites, customised SMS to get people informed about the company’s products without being challenged by geographical constraint. The step will allow more persons to have information about the products of the company and have access by purchasing it online, thus position the company at edge of the others.

The afore-stated re-engineering approach is built on the resource-based view of strategy which is summarised into three major components, namely:

1.      Operational Excellence: This will be achieved by the introduction of state of art computing gadget and inclusion of electronic means for the business operations and processes.

2.      Customer Intimacy: The adoption of e-Marketing through the usage of website will make the customers more intimate to the company, because feedback can be easily given using the website, and the use of short message service will also help in getting close to the customers more.

3.      Product Leadership: The use of high-end computing terminals will undoubtedly result in better product delivery, hence the product to be produced from the company will be on the lead among its peers, consequently make it to be more demanded for.

In conclusion, the business re-engineering process as done in consonance with the resource-based view of strategy will enhance the competencies of the UTI-MUU; an IT professional development company, therefore aids its competitive advantage among the peers in the business industry.

 References

Chishakwe, N. (2008). The role of policy in the conservation and extended use of underutilized plant species: a cross-national policy analysis. Global Facilitation Unit for Underutilized species. Bioversity International. ISBN: 978-92-9043-782-6. Retrieved from http://www.underutilized-species.org/documents/Publications/cross_national_policy_analyses.pdf

Danchev, D. (2003). Building and Implementing a Successful Information Security Policy. Internet Software Marketing, Ltd. Retrieved from http://www.windowsecurity.com/pages/security-policy.pdf

Dyson, R.G. (2004). Strategic development and SWOT analysis at the University of Warwick. European Journal of Operational Research. Elsevier. Retrieved from http://www2.egi.ua.pt/cursos/files/sad/strategic%20development%20and%20swot%20analysis.pdf

Smith, K.B. (2002). Typologies, taxonomies and the benefits of policy classifications. Journal of Policy studies. 30, 379-395.

USGPC. (2004). Strategic Planning: SWOT Analysis. California State University, Stanislaus. Retrieved from http://www.csustan.edu/StrategicPlanning/documents/SWOT-Analysis.pdf

Ward, J & Peppard, J. (2002). Strategic Planning for Information Sytems, 4^th Edition. UK. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.  ISBN: 978-0470-84147-1