Strategic Market Driven IS/IT Planning Model

Abstract

IS literature continues to highlight the issues of strategic business and IT planning alignment to achieve business performance. As an alternative to the mainstream models in the planning and implementation of the IS/IT by an organization, this chapter proposes an externalized approach by identifying the market driven needs through the firm’s value proposition to the customer derived from the product/service consumption. The market based push-pull framework is to ensure that the push strategy of the firm in what it wants to offer and at a price that it intends to offer is matched with the pull strategy of the market in what it wants to buy and at a price it is willingly to pay. This externalized customer value is reconciled by the internalized firm’s creation and delivery of the value as proposed by the firm based on the reconciliation of the market-pull and firm-push value proposition affecting customer satisfaction. Once the market pull and firm push strategy is identified, the alignment of the IT would be based on the pushpull effect of the business requirement to serve and satisfy not only the internal customer needs but also the more important external customer needs and requirements in term of the firm’s value proposition. The IT as a key enabler would be the main enabling mechanism to create and deliver on the value as proposed to the customer. A case study of how a university revamp its Information Management System by aligning the external and the internal elements is used to illustrate this reconciliation in its market driven IS/IT planning. The “market driven IS/IT” planning model is the base of the strategic integration of the internal and external elements that is contended to address the key planning issues in a more integrated and comprehensive way.