Conduct a literature review in Information Technology Strategic Planning. I have attached the paper on the basis of which we have to write paper in APA Style. I have also attached detailed assignment

Keywords-IT strategic planning; Business strategy; IT strategy I. INTRODUCTION The arrival of the era of knowledge economy makes information technology become an effective competitive weapon which can help an enterprise survive in the modem society and get greater development. Facing the economic globalization, Chinese enterprises begin to concern about informationization to strengthen their competitiveness.

However, in our country the success rate of enterprise informationization is not high. From some cases of enterprises whose informationization construction is failed, it can seen that the majority of enterprises didn't make systematic and scientific IT strategic planning in their early stages, resulting in unclear IT strategic planning and uncertain assessment of technical selection criteria. On the contrary, the successful enterprises have good overall planning. They build their information systems step by step and improve them gradually.

The way from "overall planning" to "step-by-step implementation" is the best choice for the construction of enterprise informationization. "Overall planning" means that IT strategic planning should be based on the development of business strategy in the strategy level and then develop feasible action planning. According to research results of IT strategic planning, this paper presents the "IT strategic planning model based on business strategy" to help enterprises making proper and more scientific IT strategic 978-1-4244-5540-9/10/$26.00 ©2010 IEEE 177 WangXindi Beijing Jiaotong University School of Economics and Management Beijing, China xdwang @bjtu.edu.cn planning to avoid "IT black hole" and ultimately strengthen their competitiveness.

II. IT STRATEGIC PLANNING AND BENEFITS A. Definition of IT strategic planning IT strategic planning relies on IT assessment results, it develops or adjusts the informationization guidance of enterprise, and strives for the most suitable scale, the most appropriate cost to get informationization job to be done.

Firstly, according to the strategic needs of enterprises, we should have a clear enterprise vision and mission of information technology and define the development direction of enterprise informationization and the function of business information technology in achieving the business strategy process. Secondly, we need to draft a programme to guide the enterprise informationization work. It represents constitution which should be followed by the department of information technology when it implements its job. At the same time, it is the assurance to complete the mission of information effectively. Thirdly, goals of enterprise informationization should be defined because they are the assignments which need to be done during the future years to ensure the achievement of vision and mission.

B. Benefits of IT strategic planning • IT strategic planning can promote consistence between business strategy and items of construction of enterprise informationization such as the pace, emphasis and direction, as well as the improvement of capability of enterprise to control IT and enhancement of competitiveness of enterprise [6].

• Enterprises can decide what should be focus on by judging current and future performance of the enterprises development. It also can avoid the phenomenon that irresponsible IT manufacturers agitate enterprises to launch large-scale information technology blindly in pursuit of their own profits [6].

• IT strategic planning promotes executive leaders to reach a consensus on the guiding ideology, key application fields and critical success factors of informationization.

• IT strategic planning can help IT staff and application staff to know what they should have in future such as the knowledge, skills, and criteria of selecting technologies. • IT strategic planning can help enterprises to enhance the capabilities of improving IT investment income and reduce its risks effectively.

III. IT STRATEGIC PLANNING BASED ON BUSINESS STRATEGY Information technology (IT) is changing the way companies organize their business processes, communicate with their (potential) customers and deliver their services. A key success factor for a successful company is an effective and efficient alignment of the way IT is supporting business strategies and processes. The necessity and desirability of aligning business needs and IT capabilities is examined in numerous articles and its importance is well recognized. The annual survey of top management concerns by the Society for Information Management ranked 'IT and Business alignment' as the No. 1 concern in five of the last six years.

In the year that it did not make the 'top spot', alignment ranked as the no. 2 concern. The alignment between business needs and IT capabilities therefore still is a prominent area of concern [7].

So, it can be easily seen that making IT strategy is by no means a purely technical issue, but a management-oriented issue. IT strategy should focus on the information rather than technology because Information system itself does not create information, the information can only come from business activities no matter through what channels. We need to know the sources and flow directions of information and this is the basis of IT strategic planning. In order to follow this point, an in-depth understanding about the business strategy and organizational structure of an enterprise is essential.

A. Strategic alignment model External Internal Functional Integration Business .. • IT processes and processes Figure 1. Strategic alignment model As stated by Venkatraman, Henderson and Oldach, the Strategic Alignment Model (SAM) describes business and IT alignment along two dimensions (Figure 1). The dimension of strategic fit differentiates between external focus, directed towards the business environment, and internal focus, directed towards administrative structures. The other dimension of functional integration separates business and IT.

Altogether, the model defines four domains that have been harmonized in order to achieve alignment. Each of these domains has its constituent components: scope, competencies, governance, infrastructure, processes and skills. Henderson and Venkatraman pay extensive attention to the different approaches of achieving this alignment.

Following this more holistic approach, we define business 178 and IT alignment as the degree to which the IT applications, infrastructure and organization, enable and support the business strategy and processes, as well as the process to realize this.

B. IT strategic planning model based on business strategy IT strategy is closely linked to business strategy. When the IT strategy and business strategy matches, IT will become a booster for the development of enterprises.

Otherwise, IT will become to a chicken ribs for an enterprise.

In order to make IT strategy match to business strategy, people need to understand the relationship between IT and strategy and know what the business strategy is and finally work out the IT strategy that matches to business strategy.

Figure 2 is the process of IT strategy planning based on business strategy:

r'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-' -'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'- , , Business mode and process D Business strategy IT framework and planning application IT assessment and analysis '- '-'- '-'-'-'- '-'-'- '-'-'-'- '-0-'-'- _._._ ._.-.- .

, - '-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-' -'-'-0-'-'-_.

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Planning method, appliance and H IT strategic planning I technology • IT perspective Data framework Application framework Infrastructure High-end design IT planning and design IT governance mode -:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=: ,,=:=:=:=:=:=:

r­ , IT implementation plan I , , IT Implementation and deSIgn .

�.- .-.-.-.- .-.-.- .-.-.- .-.- .-.- .-.- .-.-.- .-.- .-.- .-.I Figure 2. IT strategic planning model based on business strategy • IT assessment and analysis. To understand whether a company is delivering quality services to its users, the company should perform a self-assessment of its capabilities. This assessment should encompass five major areas: obtaining the business strategic planning, enterprise's business functions and the basic process; analyzing the business, distinguishing the IT technology and painting the substantial destination of the IT construction; analyzing the condition of curr ent information system; examining whether the business is matched to IT; assessing current IT infrastructure. • IT planning and design. IT strategy, construction of future IT framework and future IT governance mode are finished in this step. IT strategy includes: IT perspective which determines the effect of IT in enterprises; enterprise framework which is the standard for designing application framework, data framework and infrastructure; high-end design which contains standardization, core operating system, e-business, database platform, strategy of data center and strategy of disaster recovery center.

The main principles are facilitation, standardization, modularization and integration.

• IT implementation and design. The tasks in this step are finding the critical success factors, defining and sorting the specific projects, confirming the time and tasks for each step, estimating the budget and forecasting the results.

Developing a strategic planning in this manner can help ensure the alignment of business needs and IT activities.

Having such a plan can benefit the enterprise in several ways.

First, the plan provides a clear roadmap for important items.

IT projects should fall into the important items in the plan, thus eliminating unnecessary projects. Second, everyone will be "rowing" in the same direction. When people row in opposite directions, little or no progress is made in moving the boat forward. Third, the business financial team will have a high-level view of IT funding needs. Finally, a strategic planning is a great way to motivate user departments to buy into the strategy because they're intimately involved in the strategy development process.

C. Application of IT strategic planning of an insurance company Take an insurance company for example; this paper introduces how to make IT strategic planning for an enterprise by using IT strategic planning model based on business strategy.

In a highly competitive environment, the flexibility of the service pattern has become the bottleneck for a company's sustainable development. The insurance company realizes that only by promoting the future-oriented IT strategic planning and implementation, then the problem can be solved and the competitiveness of the company can be enhanced. With the aid of IT strategic planning model based on business strategy, the IT strategy planning process for this insurance company is as follows:

• IT assessment and analysis. After investigating, the strategy perspective of this insurance company is that the insurance company will play a dominant role in life insurance, health insurance and accident insurance in the next six years. In order to achieve this perspective, the insurance company makes basic strategies according to different business areas and functions. In addition, the current IT framework is designed for a single process and can't provide enterprise-level domination and manage information.

• IT planning and design. In this stage, it makes an IT perspective which is creating outstanding IT capabilities and building competitive advantage in business. Also, it makes nine strategic actions (Table 1) which can help the insurance company achieve its perspective together. From table 1, it can be seen that these nine IT strategic actions are the planning for IT strategy, IT framework and IT governance mode. Besides, these nine IT strategic actions influence the cost-cutting, quality improvement, risk-averse and flexibility improvement separately and each action has different impact at different aspects.

TABLE I. NINE IT STRATEGIC ACTIONS AND INFLUENCE Strategic actions Packet-based national concentration IT framework B2B interconnection Automation of operation and management for salesman Standardized core operating system Business Intelligence System Service delivery through various channel according to customer Segmentation Product development system, actuarial system, risk management system business applications and information system Standardized framework for IT governance In addition, it designs flexible application framework, standardized data framework, key components of IT Cost-cutting I I I I I I 179 Influence and score Quality Risk-averse Flexibility improvement improvement 3 3 3 I I I 3 3 I 3 I 3 3 3 I 3 3 3 3 I 3 I 3 3 I governance, IT infrastructure and so on. Furthermore, it also makes related design in high-end, for example standardization, core operating system, e-business, database platform, strategy of data center and strategy of disaster recovery center. Figure 3 is the value chain and application framework planning, which has the application framework covering the whole insurance value chain. The application framework includes three parts that are operational services designed to steadily improve the company's business, enterprise services designed to strengthen the company's internal management and public and support services designed to enhance the communication with customers.

r------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Operational services Agent and commission Agent customer relation management r----------------------------- Actuarial and risk management system Management information system Financial management Personnel management Office automation Enterprise services Health insurance and investment insurance Group life insurance Personal life insurance - ---------------------------------------- - Channel integration Data application integration Analytical customer relationship management Call Center Customer Service Customer relation management Public and support services Figure 3. Value chain and application framework planning • IT implementation and design. First, The projects of IT strategy are divided into five parts: to enhance the capability of IT management; to achieve the support capability for core business; to achieve the adaptive IT infrastructure; to achieve management and decision support and to enhance the capability of customer service. Second, the implementation has four stages: foundation, remedy, core and transcendence. Third, the budget is between 1.9 billion to 2.5 billion depending on different implementation providers and discounts. Third, the effect of implementation needs to be estimated from business and IT.

Through the above implement, this insurance company will establish a green IT ecosystem, which will be more active to provide support for business, meet the future business needs better, enhance the insurance company's business management skills and the capacity for sustainable development, improve the ability of controlling the risk, and finally promote the insurance company's core competitiveness to ensure that this insurance company could become to an integrated, diversified international insurance group.

180 IV.

FURTHER THINKING ABOUT STRATEGIC PLANNING In the above discussion, we put forward the standpoint that IT strategy should match business strategy and illustrate how to formulate the IT strategy which matches the business strategy so that IT strategy, as an integral part of business strategy, can meet business requirements better, enhance the core competitiveness of enterprises and achieve the company's strategic goals. But in the concrete process of operation, we need to make some further thinking considering the complex surrounding environment:

• Consistence of IT strategic planning and business strategy. IT planning has no value of existence and necessity if there is no clear business strategy. In the entire process of information technology planning, the strategic assessment and management of the diagnosis are much more complex than planning of information technology. IT planning could not be able to achieve the right remedy and targeted until these two steps are done well [2].

• Cooperation of different departments. The construction of enterprise informationization is absolutely not just a matter of IT department. It requires all relevant departments of enterprise to be involved In making planning, goals and implementation.

IT sector is the promoter of informationization, while the owners are all sectors and staff.

• IT strategic planning is an overall programming. IT strategic planning includes the network architecture design, the load of equipments, capacity calculation, security architecture system and evaluation. It provides a secure and reliable IT support strategy for the enterprise business development [4].

• Make a scientific analysis of the proportion of investment costs. The construction of enterprise informationization is a costly investment project. So, in order to reduce the investment risk and lighten unnecessary burden on business, we have to make reasonable estimates and analysis for all the input costs [4].

• Select suitable technology rather than the most advanced technology. The construction of enterprise informationization suitable for enterprise development is the best choice because information technology can not provide a real progress.

• Start from the core foundation of the project. We should have a clear planning for the priorities of the projects, firstly implement the core projects, and then produce other projects to ensure the accuracy of the budget.

• Use the power of an external consulting corporation.

Strong consulting company can provide professional advice objectively. If possible, enterprises can also send staff to the consulting corporations to take part in related training and study.

V. CONCLUSION From what has been discussed above, it is clear that IT strategic planning based on business strategy determines the future IT architecture, inputs and improvement based on the business strategy, organizational structure, operating processes and IT application status. Only information technology is suitable for management services and 181 information technology serves the enterprise management strategy and management business well, then information technology can improve the capacity of sustainable development of enterprises and enhance the core competitiveness of enterprises and all these ultimately help enterprises achieve their business strategies.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT The authors would like to thank their professors, teachers, classmates in Beijing Jiaotong University for their suggestions and insights on the paper. Also, the authors would like to thank their friends and families for listening and understanding while they completed this paper.

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