Introduction to Information Systems in Business
Aims and Objectives
The aim of this section is to introduce information systems engineering in organisations. The
following topics will be discussed :‐
The reasons why Information Technology and Information Systems are crucial to modern
organisations and thus subject to professional management;
The factors influencing information systems engineering.
Some of the ideas and many of the references in this chapter are adopted from Avison &
Fitzgerald's influential 'Information Systems Development: Methodologies, Techniques and
Tools'. This is one of the recommended texts for the Information Systems in Business Degree
in the School of Computing at the University of Glamorgan.
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The Importance of Information Technology and Information Systems
All medium to large organisations depend on Information technology For their continued
survival. Consider organisations like British Gas, British Telecom, the Power and Water
companies having to manually calculate, millions of customer bills every month or quarter!
Clearly the clerical effort involved would make it difficult if not impossible for the
organisation to make a profit. Similar arguments apply to many other organisations such as the
high street banks, central and local government. A recent article in the Daily Telegraph IT
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supplement suggested that many large organisations could last no longer than 24 hours without
IT support! There should be little wonder that attitudes to the development of information
systems have changed over the years from an ad hoc almost cavalier approach to a
professionally managed, disciplined, planned, engineering approach.See slide 4
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Factors Influencing the Systems Development Effort
A variety of factors influence Information Systems Engineering, ranging from high level
strategic to detailed technical issues. The following factors are considered, however the list
is by no means exhaustive and you may well care to add your own :‐
Tutor Guidance
A useful exercise would be to work in groups and to rank the influences mentioned above,
the exercise can be summarised by using 3 or 4 example rankings and trying to develop a
single set of rankings.
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Strategic Information Systems Planning
Organisations typically develop rolling business plans, they are constructed by taking into
account the current business, the external influences on the business (e.g. the economy,
government policy and technological advances), and the aims and objectives of the most
senior levels of management. The strategic business plan describes how the organisation will
strive to move from the current business to the target business.
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Business Planning slide 5
Information Systems support is necessary to achieve the strategic business plan, so the
business plan feeds into a Strategic Information Systems Plan (SISP), which describes how the
current IT systems are intended to evolve into the target IT systems. A 'big bang' approach is
infeasible, therefore a project based approach is used. The output of the SISP is a series of
development projects which will either involve modifying existing systems or developing
new systems (which are likelty to have to interface or integrate with exisiting systems).
In the past information systems were developed simply to improve the efficiency of specific
business functions. More recently information systems have been viewed as tools for obtaining
competitive advantage. Avison and Fitzgerald (1995) have discussed the following ways in
which information systems can help to achieve competitive advantage :‐
Porter (1980) identifies five competitive forces that any organisation needs to consider :‐
Earl (1989) extends Porter’s work by illustrating the strategic role that Information Technology
(IT) can play in addressing these forces. The result of Earl’s work is a ‘multiple’ methodology.
The methodology adopts a three pronged approach to strategic information systems
development. The first prong involves the top‐down analysis of business objectives using
Critical Success Factors (CSF), SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis
and Porter’s five forces. The second prong involves bottom‐up analysis of existing systems and
the third prong emphasises the creative use of IT.
Bullen and Rockart (1984) have produced a strategic information systems methodology based
on CSF analysis. The methodology involves the analysis of business goals and objectives and
the factors critical to achieving those objectives. The next stage is the identification of the
information systems required to support these CSFs.
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The discussion so far has emphasised a holistic approach, looking at high level business
objectives rather than detailed functional requirements. These approaches emphasize the
importance of shared corporate data, an issue which will be discusses in detail in the next
section.
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Corporate Data Management
Organisations like British Gas, British Telecom and the NHS have come to realise that on a
replacement cost basis their computerised databases are amongst their most valuable assets
(consider how much it would cost for British Gas to recapture its customer database) and that
as such they need to be professionally managed.
These companies have realised how important data accuracy and consistency is and have
developed company systems and data architectures. These are very high level models which
describe the main processes the organisation carries out and the main entities and
relationships required to support these business processes. The development of application
systems is constrained by the need to be consistent with the overarching, high level,
company wide view of its data. Chapter 5 discusses these issues in much greater depth.
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Business Process ReEngineering / Process Innovation
The idea of process innovation (Davenport and Short, 1990, Davenport, 1993) is closely linked
with the techniques of Business Process Re‐engineering. The argument is that computerising
existing systems is only likely to yield marginal gains. In many cases the only means of
achieving radical improvements is to radically re‐engineer the business process itself and use
IT to enable to re‐engineered process. Process Innovation illustrates the main argument of the
paper, i.e. that an effective methodology for ISE should adopt a rigorous, structured
approach to data design and a dynamic approach to process design.
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The Technical Environment
A company which has made a substantial investment in ICL hardware and the INGRES
Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) does not decide to convert to IBM and DB2
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lightly, so realistically the development is constrained by the existing technical environment.
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Paradigms, Models & Methodologies:
Structured Methodologies
The industry has realised that a standard approach using proven analysis and design techniques
should improve the ‘quality’ of systems. The standard methodology for the development of
business information systems in the UK is Structured Systems Analysis and Design
Methodology (SSADM). However there are many other methodologies in use around the world
such as Yourdon, Gane & Sarson, Hood and Information Engineering and DSDM (Dynamic
Systems Development Methodology). A company which has adopted SSADM has chosen to
constrain its systems development activities in a particular way.
See slide 7
The whole process is circular and never ending because implemented systems become part of
the current set of IT systems which feed into the on‐going SISP exercise.
There are other non‐monolithic models of information systems engineering which are
discussed at length in a paper by Graham entitled ‘Incremental Development: review of non‐
monolithic life cycle development models’ (Graham, 1989).
Object Orientation
RAD (Rapid Application Development, Martin, 1991) approaches began to be adopted in the
late 80’s and are based on a number of fundamental premises, the most important being the
acceptance that business processing requirements will inevitably change during the
development cycle of a system. In order to work with this fact of systems development life
the RAD approach mandates :‐
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SocioBehavioural Development
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Supporting Tools
Standard tools are likely to be used, e.g. Case tools, data dictionaries, analyst workbenches
and 4th Generation Environments (4GE). These are often linked with methodologies, e.g. the
PC/Select Case product has add‐on toolkits for SSADM and Yourdon. Again organisations using
these tools are choosing to constrain their systems development process.
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Quality Assurance
Quality may seem to the current buzzword, however many organisations take quality very
seriously and have instigated quality improvement programs which involve the use of
informal/semi‐formal walkthroughs and formal inspections and reviews. These quality control
mechanisms can be applied at every phase of the systems development lifecycle including
Strategic Information Systems Planning.
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Project Management
Everyone has heard of spectacular overruns in terms of time and budgets for computer
projects. In an attempt to overcome these problems many organisations have adopted formal,
structured (or semi‐structured) project management techniques, examples are ‘PRINCE’
(Bentley, Introducing PRINCE ‐ the structured project management method). These techniques
are frequently integrated with the methodology in use and have their own supporting tools,
e.g. PMW (Project Managers Workbench from the Hoskyns company) and ‘Microsoft Project’.
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Resource Constraints
Last but by no means least, the availability of suitable staff, money and time provide the most
obvious constraints on the systems development process.
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EndUser Systems Development
In this approach end‐users develop their own systems using a variety of user‐friendly
application development packages such as PC databases and spreadsheets.
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References
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11. Lundeberg et al, 1982 Information Systems Development ‐ A Systematic Approach
Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. (In Avison & Fitzgerald 1995).
12. Martin, 1991, Rapid Application Development, Prentice Hall Englewood Cliffs, New
Jersey. (In Avison & Fitzgerald 1995).
13. Mumford 1995, Effective Requirements Analysis and Systems Design: the ETHICS method,
MNacmillan, Basingstoke. (In Avison & Fitzgerald 1995).
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