Strategy and IS Planning in Small Businesses

Abstract

The previous five chapters have been laying the groundwork for this one. Business strategy has been discussed in terms of what it involves and how to create it. It was seen that a firm’s strategic position should be different from its competitors’ and that competitive advantage stems from these differences. It has been shown that information systems should be designed to fit in with, and support business strategy, and that information system design is not a dissimilar process to crafting strategy; both involve assessing the current situation, designing a new situation and implementing it. The importance of business process analysis and how to model business processes has been discussed. Special attention was given to the use case model as a business process modelling tool that is simple enough to be used and understood by someone with no knowledge of (or great interest in) business process modelling, which is why it is suitable for use in small businesses. It has been shown that creativity is important in strategy and information systems design and some techniques for stimulating creativity have been introduced. What follows is an explanation of an approach to use all of these elements to create strategy and plan IS in small businesses.