An information system planning has been considered to be a pivotal role and is also significant issue which the IT managers face because of heavy investment in IS. To plan effectively an organization needs to know its present position, its strengths and weaknesses, those of its competitors, market trends.
Abstract
This paper describes about the issues and goals of organizations as to how it can be more successful if the methodology of IS Planning is implemented. The methodology should be aligned with business strategy here. I have discussed below about the two companies as case studies, one is UltraTech Concrete and the other is Champion Compressors. The aim is to see how the two companies use IS planning and the IS related functions. UTC or UltraTech Concrete is a large organization based in India with a larger number of IT employees, it has developed its IS planning and IS functions, where as Champion Compressors is a smaller organization with less number of employees, it has also developed IS functions although being a non IT organization, it has IS planning methodologies implemented. These companies have been chosen because they are contrasting in terms of their size, scale of operations, management practices and policies.
The findings suggest that large companies generally tend to the best practices and that the smaller companies grossly deviate the best practices. Mostly it dealt with theoretical background issues whereas the manager’s responses laid more focus on the current market issues, industry and their clients. Based on this I have identified few steps to successful transform the IT organization. Creating a vision, assisting the current organization, then developing an organizational design and lastly implement the new methods to achieve the common goals.
Introduction
An information system planning has been considered to be a pivotal role and is also significant issue which the IT managers face because of heavy investment in IS. To plan effectively an organization needs to know its present position, its strengths and weaknesses, those of its competitors, market trends, etc. These information systems should also contribute to the revenue as well.Even though they are expensive and time consuming to develop, the IS plan should be developed as part of business strategy. Since past few years the IS staff have been lesser in number with only little time for adequate selection and training.Indeed the organization structure is expected to be different when compared to other firms because of its competitive strategy, business unit autonomy and industry stability. For each organization there are different units in which the decision authority lies. It is sufficient that IS mangers find themselves focusing increasing amount of attention on human resource issues. Every organization has their disaster recovery plans. The literature analysis was very useful in comparing with the responses of the IT managers as they clearly explained the theoretical and conceptual ideas of all the topics.
This report has been analysed and discusses about the literature review of IS planning, managing IT human resources for assistance in managing the IT department and the attitude of smaller companies towards IS planning. The circumstances that can also prevail on the aspect of recovery plans and the importance of analysing their cost/benefits have been viewed. This paper displays the usage of IT, its comparison with regards of literature review which accordingly shows that the ‘real world’ is in par with the theoretical world.
Organization 1 – Background
To begin with UltraTech Concrete is a US $24 billion corporation who proudly declares in Fortune 500. What started as a small cement plant in the year 1983 UTC has today grown into the 8th biggest cement manufacturer in the world. UltraTech is India’s largest exporter of cement clinker. The company exports over 2.5 million tonnes per annum to countries in Asia, Africa, Europe and Middle East. With a manufacturing capacity of 17 million metric tonne annually, ten plants and four bulk terminals, UTC also builds flyover, bridges, runways and dams. Concrete is most vital material in modern construction. It has versatile properties like easy mould ability, high compressive strength and long lasting durability. The ingredients of good and bad concrete are the same. The difference lies in the technology used for production, transportation and placement. In UTC, qualified and experienced Application Engineers are exclusively dedicated to each pumping operation that provides advice regarding placing, compacting, finishing and curing of concrete. These highly experienced employees also advice regarding maintaining correct thickness of slab, compaction, finishing, protection and curing. With growing demand for cement in the wake of housing and infrastructure boom the company is set to attain newer heights. Its subsidiaries are: Dakshin Cements Limited and UltraTech Ceylinco Private Limited.
URL: http://www.ultratechconcrete.com/thecompany.html
Organization 2 – Background
Champion Compressors is Australia’s largest manufacturer of rotary screw air compressors, air receivers, water chillers, vacuum systems and a wide range of associated ancillary equipment. ISO 9001:2008 certified, Champion’s depth of local engineering support uniquely positions the company to design products for Australia’s hot, humid and harsh conditions, and customize compressed air solutions from the ground up to meet exact customer specifications faster. Products are sold into more than 30 countries worldwide and proudly have 22 locations in Australia. On basis of this, they give a sense of satisfaction to customers by providing 24 / 7 support and also the readily available of spare parts at a remarkable short notice.
Champion Compressors service technicians are now equipped with a customised wireless hand-heldElectronic Service Device(ESD). An all-in-one portable servicing tool, Champion’s ESD allows technicians to keep a comprehensive electronic job service history, access service and stock data while on site, as well as track and trend the operation of the customer’s entire compressed-air system. This latest innovation from Australia’s leading compressed-air specialist streamlines the servicing process and provides industry with unprecedented insight into the state of their compressed-air systems�all at the touch of a button.The main 5 type of components they deal with are industrial air compressors, customised air compressors, portable air compressors, compressed air treatment and industrial cooling solutions. Based in Melbourne it is integrated with United Technologies Corporation, one of the world’s largest companies with over 225,000 employees worldwide, Champion employs around 250 people. Sullair Australia, an emerging presence in Australia’s construction and mining industry is a sister company of Champion.
URL: http://championcompressors1-px.rtrk.com.au/company/company.php
IS Planning
IS Planning Literature Analysis
One of the major functions that have been identified in most of the technical based firms is the departments of Information system planning and its governance. The need to mechanise their main operation and improve their effectiveness is a vital process to achieve organisational effectiveness and competitiveness. In order to plan properly the firm needs to know where it stands today, its strengths and areas of improvement, those of it main competitors and understanding market trends (Bhattacharjya & Venable 2006). In the past years during 1980’s and 1990’s the firms did realise the need of planning should be in depth and hence the strategic information system planning (SISP) was the critical issue faced by many managers at that point of time. One of the best methods adopted for planning to fit in place was to consider IS an issue within the standard functional requirements planning processes of the organization (Lee G & Bai 2003).
It has been evident that there is a rapid change in the business environments, IS planning strategies have been shifted from Technology mode to Fit mode. Usually it has been periodically planned for every two to three years with a basis of frequent monitoring techniques. Now these models can be categorised into impact and alignment. The former category enables in creating and satisfying the new user of IT along with process and tasks given while the latter insists on aligning the systems plans and priorities with organisational strategy and business (Ravichandran & Pant 2001). Large firms having higher computer aided systems and highly integrated systems need to have a development of strategies which the top management authorities demand of. The quality produced should be relatively high in order to support the strategy and acquiring long term goals (Bhattacharjya & Venable 2006).
Evaluating an organisations standing at the present involves returns on investment, rate of return received during a specific period, the current net value of stock and deadlines for payback approaches (Lee G & Bai 2003). Contrastingly according to Ravichandran & Pant 2001, the reasons for successful information systems have always been considered as operational perspective and strategic. The explanation of strategic is because of the wide performance level established in the planning area and operational perspective because of the internal values in terms of efficiency and effectiveness in the firm. So what are the reasons behind a successful implementation?
Fardal & Sornes 2008 suggests that firms do make decisions to increase the performance but the effectiveness depends on useful the employees utilise the information systems given to them. Now when both IS users and managers responsible for strategic planning agree to correct the IS related issues then it has a positive influence on the IS use. It can be further added that if the users are actually given a chance of decision making panel then the quality of IS use shall directly link with the positive performance of the IS planning and successful governance.
ULTRA TECH CONCRETE / UTC
UTC group, one of the largest firms who also use IT in its organization because of its vast expansion and hence it is concerned about their IS planning. The fact lies in the answers that were provided by the interviewee which displayed the information that there are planning focuses more on the requirements of their business and relatively lesser on customers.From this is it is easy to analyse that UTC group is more of a B2B model which is nothing but a business to business and hence their main focus on IS planning is linked with other top business firms. No specific methods have been followed but in rare circumstances in regards with top level authorities a hidden pattern is usually adopted known only to the superiors. Now that being one of their major concerns is the other reason they plan for Information Systems for a minimum of 15 months ahead. It only displays the fact that there has been a vision and mission in the firm from the top level management and hence the planning occurs well in advance. The criterion is to make a strategy and implement for the longer run to mark a security for the firm. The IS planning is planned in such a manner that it is matches the business plan. Now when the plans have been made , when the time to execute comes, various steps are involved such as reviewing, analysis and providing feedback to ensure whether the plan is begin followed or not.
Reviewing is considered as to check whether the planning has been on the right track or not. Analysis is based on the factors that assumptions and forecast go hand in hand. Different ways are followed to evaluate if the company’sIS plan is successful or not. Ultra Tech Concrete evaluates its success based on the financial statements that is generated at the end of the financial year. The Profit / Loss statement displays most of the facts that the company is concerned about.
CHAMPION COMPRESSORS
Champion Compressors response to IS Planning questions displays to some extent that they when compared to the former group, they are a small organization that also follows IS Planning. The planning methodology used in this company does not follow any specific method. Only when it comes to meeting the older businesses involved since its formation, the spiral method is used. When it comes to the time span for information system planning Champion Compressors usually plan for its strategy for a period of 4 to 12 calendar months. The planning strategy that they use is entirely based on business needs.
The medium sized company uses a software tool for tracking the work done by the employees in order to track the information being shared. The evaluation of the success of IS planning is based on the customer satisfaction.
COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS: UTC & CHAMPION COMPRESSORS
SIMILARITIES
1. In IS planning methodology, both the organisations do not use any particular or specific methods. The former company has its own set of pattern and undisclosed information while the latter firm only follows the spiral method when it is necessary.
2. The planning duration seen in both the firms are closely related. While the UTC group plans well in advance for the next 15months, the Champion Compressors do plan for a minimum of the coming 4 months to a maximum of 12 months time.
DIFFERENCES
1. With respect to steps taken up to follow IS plan, both of the companies differ in few ways. UTC group follows a different pattern of evaluating success by the use of financial statements whereas the Champions Compressors derive its results from the business satisfaction rating.
COMPARING THE LITERATURE WITH THE CURRENT PRACTICES
- In the above analysis of the literature of strategic information system planning (SISP), we come to know that there are two types of methodologies categorized into impact methodology and alignment methodology. Impact methodology helps to create and justify new uses of IT where as the alignment methodology align IS objectives with the organizational goals. So it is visible that the both the companies Ultra Tech Concrete and Champion Compressors use the alignment methodology as their planning depends on the business requirements which focuses on long term achievement of organizational goals.
- Secondly as per literature both companies have high quality IT systems so their quality of IS planning is very high and also their success rate is also at the higher side. So this matches with literature comfortably.
- Lastly in the evaluating criteria, UTC group evaluates success based on financial statements by the profit and loss statement and Champion Compressors follow a pattern of success based on their success of business satisfaction.
Managing IT Human Resource
Managing human resource is one of the biggest challenges faced by organization particularly in larger organizations and this challenge can be overcome by strategic planning. Managing human resource via planning includes analysis of the external and internal environment and complies with the human resource objective in order to achieve the organizational goals. Effectively planning human resource is the subsequent step towards achieving innovation in technical firms. Effective planning in turn needs analyzing and determining the employee needs, selection, recruiting, hiring the best people for research and development.
Literature Analysis
Parry E & Wilson H 2009, point out that recruitment is generally done by companies to identify and retain potential employees. It is because the ability to attract human capital into the organization that plays an important role in managing people. Ghosh P and Geetika 2007, insists that if the selected employees are retained and maintained well within the organization it only brings good competitive advantage. This is because, the cost of turnover in terms of the money for recruitment and lost project continuity are high.
Managing the cultural difference can frontier some of the practices of the managing human resource. In the process of recruitment, usually there are different methods; the recruitment methods which are used in smaller firms are different from that of the large firms. In smaller firms they use informal method which includes referrals and word of mouth. In case of large organization the recruitment method are formal and includes the involvement of media such as television, newspaper, radio and employment agencies (Barber et al., 1999). With the informal recruitment process the biggest disadvantage is that the group in the society may not have a fair chance and this will encourage the existing gender, race or other factor to continue in the same pattern thereby disturbing the workforce balance (Carroll et al., 1999).
Accordingly the informal recruitment methods will select from the familiar faces and familiar peoples of existing employees, whereas in the case of formal method this helps to attract a pool of talented people from different walks of life. According to Parry E & Wilson H 2009, the job satisfaction is one of the significant elements in turnover among the IT professionals.In case of smaller firms the employees are less socialized with other people, in such stances the informal method of recruiting is very valuable such as referrals. Internally employees should be reviewed in order to check the job satisfaction as job satisfaction is one of the major problem in managing Human resource. Parry E & Wilson H 2009 also adds that internet has indeed brought a radical change in the corporate recruitment. More than 50% of the hires in USA are based online which are sought by recruiters and job seekers.
Barber et al., 1999 also insists that different organizations use different career progression techniques to retain there IS employees. An ongoing escalator is always helpful to the employees to climb up the organization through their work and performance. It is the duty of the HR department to make awareness to the existing employees about their career opportunities involving areas around promotions, bonuses, a raise in the current salary, personal recognition and working conditions. These little things do make a lot of difference.
The interesting case of IT organization is that mostly there are chances of getting the fresh graduates recruited and they start the career as junior or support engineers. Prospective candidates who are 3 to 5 years of experience are given the responsibility of project leader or project manager. They generally play a supervisory role. Usually they work for managing the team of computer engineers and information technology specialists (Ghosh P & Geetika 2007).
COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS: UTC & CHAMPION COMPRESSORS
1. An important aspect of human resource has been adopted by both the companies UltraTech Concrete and Champion Compressors and they treat their employees as an asset. Champion Compressors being a medium scale organization have career development program for their employees, which motivates the employee to work hard and achieve organization objective. UTC on the other end also has some employee development programs like personality development programs, appraisals at regular interval, bonus, etc.
2. For UTC special screening method to recruit employees that include the minimum qualification, medical tests, etc and Champion Compressors recruit employees on long term basis so they have an extensive method of securing talents.
3. More than 50% is based on outsourced recruitments in UTC group whereas heavy experience plays a vital role in Champion Compressors in order to get recruited for the top notch position.
4. Comparing the employee profile, UTC is anchored by 60,000 employees from 18 different nationalities and the latter being a medium sized consists of 250 employees.
5. There are 10-14 hierarchical levels existing in UTC whereas in the latter it consists of less than 6 departments in IS.
6. The ratio of IS managers to IS staff in UTC is 1:16 because it is relatively large organization. In the other company, the ratio is 1:4 which is quite lesser because of the size of the firm.
One major difference visible in both the companies is that the styles of recruitment methods are totally different. Secondly, the level of qualification also plays an important role because there lays a criterion about a minimum degree for the candidate to have before applying for a role in the UltraTech Concrete whereas in the case of Champion Compressors they do give an opportunity to the interested candidates after a small mini test.
COMPARING THE LITERATURE WITH THE CURRENT PRACTICES
In the literature it is mentioned that larger organization use formal recruitment such as newspaper advertisements and employment agencies whereas smaller organization use informal recruitment method such as words of mouth, referrals. UTC which is a bigger organization uses formal recruitment procedure that is special screening method followed for an employee joining organization like minimum qualification, minimum 2 years of experience, should be presentable, effective communication skills, etc. On the other end, Champion Compressors being small organization they are very selective in recruitment process, give an opportunity to the fresh candidates and also use an extensive method to secure the talents.
In the above literature job satisfaction has been discussed as one of the significant elements in turnover among the IT professionals. Champion Compressors manage turnover by being very selective during the recruitment process as they are medium sized organization. Their main criterion is that to develop and recruit only those candidates who can maintain a long term relationship with the company. Ultra Tech Concrete on the other hand generates other techniques to manage their turnover which is not revealed by the interviewee.
Conclusion
After a much detail analysis through this paper we have found that companies generally dont follow the planned IS approach properly. Even though they are at par with the theoretical world it is also visible that they are not too far behind. The planning usually varies with that of size of the organization and business needs. In fact both the firms follow a proper hierarchical structure and make the most of Big I and Small I integration which shows that it does match with literature. In terms of recruitment procedure, various strategies are used in both the firms which are mentioned in literature review. Ratios of mangers to staff are different and that is another reason why the companies defer in planning process. Hence the size of an organization plays a good role in maintaining the structural level. Another finding reveal that career program and other developmental activities are carried out effectively to retain the IT talent. Thus from these findings, it is concluded that in real world organizations mostly adopt the strategies which are more business oriented whereas the literature focuses more on the theoretical issues.
REFERENCES:
Barber, A., Wesson, M., Roberson, Q. And Taylor, S., 1999, “A tale of two job markets: organizational size and its side effects on hiring practices and job search behavior”, Personnel Psychology, Vol.52 No.4, pp841-67.
Bhattacharjya & Venable 2006, ‘Adapting Soft Systems Methodology for Strategic Information Systems Planning: An Action Research Study in a Non-Profit Organisation in Australia’, ACIS Proceedings, Association for Information Systems.
Carroll, M., Marchington, M., Earnshaw, J. And Taylor, S., 1999, “Recruitment in small firms: processes, methods and problems”, Employee relations, vol.21 No.3, pp 236-50.
Fardal, H & Sornes O. J 2008, ‘IS Strategic Decision-Making: A Garbage Can View’, Issues in informing science and information technology, vol. 5, viewed on 21 May 2010.
Ghosh P & Geetika 2007, ‘Recruitment strategies: exploring the dimensions in the Indian Software industry’, Asian journal of management cases, vol. 4, no. 5, pp. 5-25, viewed on 15 May 2010.
Lee G & Bai R 2003, ‘Organizational mechanisms for successful IS/IT strategic planning in the digital era’, Industrial management and data systems, vol. 103, no. 8, pp. 622-632, viewed on 18 May 2010.
Pant S & Ravichandran T 2001, ‘A framework for information systems planning for e-business’, Logistics information management, vol. 14, no. 1, pp. 85-98, viewed on 16 May 2010.
Parry E & Wilson H 2009, ‘Factors influencing the adoption of online recruitment’, vol. 38, no 6, pp. 655-673, viewed on 19 May 2010.