Information Systems Investment Strategies

Because IS managers are under increasing pressure from their organizations' executive management to show positive financial returns on information systems investments, they must carefully select systems projects that will produce financial rewards and enhance the department's productivity. The five-step ISIS 'information systems investment strategies' process is designed to help management identify its business goals and select those future projects that will produce the most financial and operational success.     

The leveraging influence of strategic alignment on IT investment: An empirical examination

Businesses have invested enormous sums in information technology (IT). The challenge now is to optimize these investments. We empirically examined the influence of the alignment between IS strategy and business strategy (strategic alignment) on the payoff of IT investment. Many studies have been performed on the value of IT investment and strategic alignment separately, in the past, but here we combined them by investigating the moderating affect of strategic alignment on the relationship between IT investment and firm performance for a group of manufacturing firms. The results indicated that there is a synergistic coupling between strategic alignment and IT investment with firm performance. Firms that have aligned IT and business strategies can invest in additional IT resources with some assurance that they will be leveraged substantially. One of our main contributions was in the examination of four differing perspectives of strategic alignment and their relationship with the payoff of IT investment.     

Effects of strategic alignment on IS success: the mediation role of IS investment in Korea

The purpose of this research is to develop a comprehensive information system (IS) evaluation model for IS success linked to organizational performance. The primary focus of this research is to investigate the role of IT investment in business values by means of a group survey of about 300 business executives in Korea. We used the contingency theory to discover the mediation effect of IS investment on strategic alignment and IS success. In contrast to previous research, this study expanded the test scope to IS architecture and organizational structure at the operational level. The results from 273 business executives in Korea indicated that strategy integration with IT is positively related to IT investment, and IT investment is a critical antecedent of IS success. Thus, the implications of the findings are that right-directional IT investment has played an important role in the success of IT companies in Korea.     

Deployment of systems development methodologies: Perceptual congruence between IS managers and systems developers

We studied the differences in perception between IS managers and developers about the deployment of systems development methodologies. The results indicated that IS managers were generally more positive about systems development methodologies than were developers. IS managers perceived methodology support for organizational alignment, and methodology impact on the productivity and quality of the development process to be significantly more important than did system developers, who, in turn, perceived methodology support for verification and validation significantly higher than did IS managers. These differences can be explained by the relevance and importance of the support to the task that the stakeholders perform.     

INFORMATION INFRASTRUCTURE MANAGEMENT

Corporate survival in an information economy requires that IS managers assume the new role of information infrastructure management, an architecture-focused approach that results in an integrated IS and business organization with an integrated strategic plan. The approach enables IS managers to anticipate future organizational demands and stimulate innovative redesign of business processes to continuously improve performance.     

BUILDING A STRONGER IRM CURRICULUM

This article presents the results of a survey of 90 information systems managers and 63 educators who evaluated 46 topics on information resource management (IRM), rating their importance in undergraduate and graduate course studies. Although the IS managers and educators agreed on the importance of some topics, major differences of opinion existed regarding the importance of others. A well-balanced IRM curriculum is possible if it incorporates the microperspective of IS managers along with the macroviews of IS educators.     

Understanding employee competence,operational IS alignment,and organizational agility – An ambidexterity perspective

Views on whether business-information systems (IS) alignment enhances or impedes organizational agility vary. The present study addresses this paradox by examining business-IS alignment at the strategy implementation stage, that is, the operational level. We conceptualize operational-level IS alignment (hereafter OISA) as an ambidextrous capability consisting of both structural and social alignments and examine its effect on organizational agility. Furthermore, we study the role of shared competence between business and IS departments in achieving OISA ambidexterity. Survey data of 119 departmental managers empirically support our research model. We summarize the implications and suggestions for future research.     

CORPORATE HIRING CRITERIA FOR IS GRADUATES

Results of a two-part study of the skills sets needed by recent IS graduates and the hiring criteria used to evaluate job candidates indicate the importance of both practical experience and business knowledge to today's IS graduates. The findings have implications for IS managers and recruiters responsible for hiring personnel capable of using contemporary technology to support business objectives.     

Critical IS professional activities and skills/knowledge: A perspective of IS managers

This study utilized the activity competency model to investigate the perceived importance of critical professional activities and skills/knowledge required by three levels of information system (IS) managers. Our findings indicated that the perceived importance of critical IS professional activities were significantly different among the management levels, but not significantly different for various industry types. Carrying a critical IS activity out involves the use of a number of different skills and/or knowledge. A portfolio of the professional activities and the needed skills/knowledge at each management level are identified. The results of this study have implications for IS professional development and training. They can also serve as a guideline for recruiting the right IS managers and developing IS curriculums.     

A study of subsidiaries’ views of information systems strategic planning in multinational organisations

This research examines information systems strategic planning (ISSP) in multinationals from the perspective of the subsidiaries. The research was carried out through interviews with the IT and business managers in subsidiaries of nine large American, European, and Japanese multinationals. The evidence from this study reveals that, in the majority of these organisations, IS planning is either centralised or moving towards centralisation. The main focus of IS planning, in many of these organisations, is to control cost and achieve scale economies. As centralisation increases IT tends to control the planning process and, as a result, IS planning becomes more tactical than strategic and is dominated by IT infrastructure planning. Project implementation was the main criterion used to measure IS planning success. However, due to the dominant role of IT, the subsidiary business managers are often less satisfied with the IS planning approach compared with the subsidiary IT managers. The level of involvement of business managers and their satisfaction with ISSP was related to the degree of decentralisation of responsibility for IS planning.     

Retooling for Client/Server Applications

Enterprise learning institutes for client/server applications serve two important purposes: they increase the return on the IT investment and they provide IS managers with a new leadership opportunity in the firm's business sector.     

To the Top and Forward in Time

The work of IS managers ranges from the top to the bottom of the organization. This column reviews four books that focus on some of the IS managers' responsibilities with respect to the top of the organization; these include creating executive support systems, teaching other senior managers about the role of information in the organization, and scanning the future technological environment to prepare for changes in the way the organization does business.     

To the Top and Forward in Time

The work of IS managers ranges from the top to the bottom of the organization. This column reviews four books that focus on some of the IS managers' responsibilities with respect to the top of the organization; these include creating executive support systems, teaching other senior managers about the role of information in the organization, and scanning the future technological environment to prepare for changes in the way the organization does business.     

Some empirical evidence on IS Strategy Alignment in banking

Recent research amongst North-American and European IS managers shows that for both groups the alignment of IS strategy and corporate strategy is a top priority. IS alignment approaches do, however, exist, describing a generic process, independent of the characteristics of any particular industry or company. Here, an attempt is made to apply IS Strategy Alignment to banking, with the aim to identify major issues and to attempt to determine the relationships between these issues, based on a research project in a number of European banks. This work suggests that the main problem in generating improved IS Strategy Alignment is a lack of overall sector knowledge (not skills) amongst banking managers. Awareness of IS issues (even the softer ones) does not cause problems, but the application of these issues in the banking world does. The influence of mind sets on IS Strategy Alignment awareness proved to be important. Based on an experience with the analytical methods used and the results obtained, other methods of empirical investigation are suggested, including new issues in IS Strategy Alignment.     

Developing a set of management needs for IS managers: a study of necessary managerial activities and skills

This study presents an activity competency model (ACM) that was developed to investigate the perceived importance of managerial activities and skills/knowledge required of three levels of information systems (IS) managers from three types of industries. Our findings indicate that, not surprisingly, the importance of IS managerial activities varies significantly for different levels of management but does not vary significantly for different industries. The results of this study have implications for management development, training, and IS management career planning. They can also serve as a guideline for recruiting the right IS managers.     

Comparing the relative importance of evaluation criteria in proprietary and open‐source enterprise application software selection – a conjoint study of ERP and Office systems

Until recently, organizations willing to acquire application systems have had no choice but to adopt proprietary software. With the advent of open‐source software (OSS), a new model for developing and distributing software has entered the stage. OSS has evolved from a generally horizontal infrastructure towards more highly visible applications in vertical domains, giving information systems (IS) managers more degrees of freedom in their selection of enterprise application software (EAS). Although a large body of research exists on the relative importance of evaluation criteria for proprietary EAS, the role of OSS in the EAS evaluation process has received little attention so far. To address this research gap, this study represents the first empirical investigation to compare the relative importance of evaluation criteria in proprietary and open‐source EAS selection. Through an online survey, we evaluated the responses of IS managers of 358 organizations to a conjoint study spawning 8592 trade‐off pair comparisons and 3580 purchase evaluations on proprietary and open‐source enterprise resource planning (ERP) and Office software packages. The results show that the relative importance of evaluation criteria significantly varies between proprietary and open‐source ERP systems. Implementation factors such as ease of implementation and support are much more crucial in the evaluation of open‐source than of proprietary ERP systems, which is generally due to IS managers' risk mitigation behaviour. Interestingly, there are no major differences in the ranking of evaluation criteria between proprietary and open‐source Office systems. We conclude our paper with a detailed discussion of our findings and their implications for researchers, companies, EAS vendors and open‐source communities.     

The case for continued Cobol education

Many educators are reexamining their curricula's content and scope to more successfully market graduates from their information systems programs. Meanwhile, business and industry IS managers have similar concerns about the continued need to maintain the large inventory of legacy code while also developing new systems. Cobol applications and mainframe computing continue to dominate a large segment of the business community in which conventional data- and transaction-processing requirements still drive major applications. The requirement to maintain existing Cobol applications supports continued demand for new Cobol programmers. Furthermore, e-commerce applications will require linking existing mainframe applications to the Internet, occupying much of the IS activity for the foreseeable future. In accessing the IS manager's view and the academic's view of Cobol's future, the survey presented found that 95% of its academic respondents and 90% of the IS managers polled want the IS curricula to continue offering Cobol instruction. Also, nearly 90% of IS managers indicate that Cobol instruction in colleges should cover both Cobol's OO and Web based features     

STANDARDS FOR EXPERT SYSTEM TOOLS

IS managers can move expert systems into their organizations' Information technology culture by choosing a standard tool set that can be used to solve a range of business problems. Selecting a standard expert system tool, however, is a strategic move that requires a long-range focus as well as an investment in education and a corporate Infrastructure to support and grow with the technology.     

Rapid business and IT change: drivers for strategic information systems planning?

Today's organizations increasingly plan new information systems (IS) to better compete. Through such planning, they attempt to align their IS strategy and their business strategy. This study tested the impact of business and information technology (IT) change on strategic information systems planning (SISP) horizon, of horizon on the planning itself, and of the planning on the alignment of IS strategy and business strategy. A questionnaire defined business change, IT change, and alignment as multi-item scaled questions, and planning horizon as a single, nonscaled one. It defined a multi-item scaled SISP measure as both a second-order construct and as single-order constructs for its individual phases. A postal survey collected data from 161 IS executives. Constructs were extensively validated. The analysis used structural equation modeling, and surprisingly found that business change predicted longer SISP horizons, but IT change predicted neither longer nor shorter ones. Planning horizon predicted SISP itself (as a second-order construct and as all of its phases), and such planning (as a second-order construct, and as strategic awareness and strategy conception phases) predicted alignment of IS strategy and business strategy. These findings suggest that practitioners more carefully assess their own degree of caution in setting planning horizons in response to business and IT change. In fact, the findings suggest it may not be necessary for practitioners to shorten planning horizons in a rapidly changing environment.