Strategic Information System and Its Role in Enhancing Organizational Efficiency and Effectiveness - Findings and Conclusion

Discussion and Findings

Information systems are widely used in business. Information systems become strategic when it has the necessary connection to the business’s strategy. Understanding this link is crucial in order to understand the nature of Strategic Information System. By understanding this, we can study the role of this system towards enhancing the organizational efficiency and effectiveness. But in order to be strategic enough, the system has to impose few factors, among all, the contribution from the system towards achieving and sustaining organizational competitive and comparative advantages.
In order to enable the system to support in achieving and sustaining organizational competitive and comparative advantages, there are few criteria need to be discussed. Those criteria are the alignment of information system to the business strategy, the selection of type of information system to be implement, the knowledge in information technology that enable the utilization of information system and factor influencing the success of implementation from positive and negative’s perspectives.
In the alignment’s scope of contribution, the planning stage of information system is one of the most important factors. How well the system being planned will lead to the nature of result that it will come. Pant & Hsu (1995) discussed about the critical issues in planning of information system. The planning stage starts with identification of need. Information system should be implemented based on need of the organization. Later it should consider the methodologies of implementation which covers around factors such as impact methodologies and critical success factors.
Looking at the process of selecting the information system, both side of implementation should be in the focus. In the system’s side, the type, ability and capability of the system are crucial. Selection of the system also includes availability of systems offered, cost of implementation and also support from the system’s supplier.
On the organization’s side, it is important to measure the readiness of organization to adopt the system. Lack of information technology management is known to be one of critical factors that restraint the evaluation of cost and benefit of implementation (Dhillon & Caldeira, 2000). Another factor is organization’s strategy to cop with rapid development in information system. Mourrier (2001) explained about change in information technology and system that permits speedy decision making. This changes have to be adapted to the organization to keep in pace with the streamline of information system.
To further discuss this, we could not avoid pulling in the knowledge impact towards the implementation. Human, often is known to be the most “difficult to control” factor in an organization (Perez & de Pablos, 2003) and intellectual capital became more important in the organization. Williams (1997) also discussed about key resources that need to be developed, that is knowledge and it should be analyzed prior to determining the information system. Knowledge also related to risk of implementation. By knowing the knowledge level within the organization, we may foresee the risk and implication of the system’s implementation in the organization.
Lastly, there are requirement to study the factors the may enable or disable the smooth implementation of information system. It ranged from the infrastructure and development factors, organizational factors and factor at the system itself. Both side of positive and negative factors need to be understood in order to ensure implementation can be done and may achieve the organizational objectives.
For an example, looking into infrastructural context, it may trigger some understanding about basic need of hardware in implementation which comprises of computing devices, networking peripherals, data transmission and communication system and few other related factors. Zooming into broader view, it can be discussed on how important is the authority involvement in this field by building the required infrastructures, implement certain policies and involvement in promoting the usage of information systems.
Factors that slow down the success of implementation should be look into as an opportunity to learn and improve. Measures to overcome those barriers need to be searched.
Overall, this review briefs something about how a Strategic Information System can influence the organizational result in the end.

Limitation of review

This review only limited to analysis on strategic information system’s role which focused from alignment, selection and factors in implementing the system. Specific research on the direct impact of strategic information system was not done. It is recommended that the linkage of the implementation of information system towards the results of achievement to be studied in later review.

Conclusion

Base on the review done, it can be seen that strategic information systems do play an important role in enhancing the organizational efficiency and effectiveness. But the basic foundation at the implementation stage is vital. User participation at implementation phase will permit them to fully understand the needs and peripherals of the system (Kappelman and McLean, 1992).
Alignment between information system and strategic objective of the organization are utmost important. In order to have good alignment, there are a lot of factor that need to be focused on. The first is on the selection of system to be used. Internal factor of knowledge and adaptation of user to the system also plays a major part in creating an alignment between the information system and organizational objectives.
Result will be seen in the way of realization of cost-quality leadership, product and service development and also on market development.