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[CASE STUDY FOR IT STRATEGIC PLANNING]
The case includes the literature review, SWOT analysis and program flow chart for an IT product with
relevance to its strategic planning.



Table of Contents

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LITERATURE REVIEW OF STRATEGIC PLANNING ........................................................................................... 3

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Strategic Planning: .................................................................................................................................... 3

Introduction: ............................................................................................................................................. 3

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Review of Strategic Planning: ................................................................................................................... 3

The Perspective of Strategic Information Systems Planning ........................................................................ 5

Strengths ................................................................................................................................................... 5
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Weakness .................................................................................................................................................. 6

Opportunity............................................................................................................................................... 7
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Threats ...................................................................................................................................................... 7

Approach towards the Perisher Blue strategic plan ................................................................................. 8
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Business Flow Chart ...................................................................................................................................... 9

REFERENCES ................................................................................................................................................ 10
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The result of planning should be effective, efficient, and economical...that is, suitable for the
intended purpose, capable of producing the desired results, and involving the least investment of

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resources.

-Clark Crouch

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LITERATURE REVIEW OF STRATEGIC PLANNING

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Strategic Planning:

The planning activity is the one confronts the major strategic decisions that the organizations are
facing. A decision is not rendered strategic merely by being important. Strategic decisions or
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issues fulfill the following criteria: Define the institution’s relationship to its
environment; generally take the whole organisation as the unit of analysis; Depend on inputs
from a number of functional areas; Provide direction for, and constraints on, administrative and
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operational activities throughout the institution or organisation.

Introduction:
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For developing strategies it is most important to know what is driving an industry and the forces
that can influence and are important in the future. To understand these forces we have to focus
on strategic planning in order to set the context and explain the origins and meaning of strategy
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in the environment. Amazing things can happen when you have an IT strategy aligning business
and IT objectives. Everyone in your business will know that IT is successful. Budget fights are
eliminated because there is a direct tie between the IT work and the business results from IT.

Review of Strategic Planning:

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The importance and need for designing strategic planning systems to fit particular organisations
and their unique context has been widely addressed by renowned management writers. For
instance, (Morrisey 1996a, 1996b), a strategic planning consultant and author, repeatedly stresses
the need to customize the strategic thinking, long-range planning and tactical planning processes

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to best fit the needs of an organisation. (Mintzberg 1993) suggests that planning differs
according to the structure of the organisation. For example, machine bureaucracies are more
likely to stress action planning, divisionalized firms emphasize performance targets and

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entrepreneurial firms often use vision as a means of coordinating and focusing work.
Frederickson (1986) considered the effect that organisation structure might have on strategic
decision processes and concluded. IT industry is a wide term that under winds many sectors like

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computer sciences, online systems, mobile commerce, online games, factory automation systems
and database management within organisations. For the proper maintenance of business
operations, IT strategic planning is of vital importance.
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In reviewing of academic strategic planning the strategic issues are addressed in detail by
summarizing the strengths and weaknesses (internal) and opportunities and threats (external)
facing the organizations. In order to find strategic issues that hinder organisations to achieve
vision, it is necessary to identify the good and bad thing that can help the organisation. Further,
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the specific barriers or impediments are described that can affect the resolution of identified
strategic issues within organization (Dr. Kion 2003). Over the last 30 years the organisations
have had an intermittent engagement with strategic planning, the cost has been lost momentum,
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poor planning, confusion, wasted capital and demoralization all contributing to poor
organizational performance (Kotler 2000).

Empiric studies' findings indicate at a correlation between strategic planning and performance.
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Nevertheless, the findings are mixed. A survey of twenty-six experimental studies enabled
(Miller and Cardinal 1994) to identify a significant positive connection between strategic
planning and small business performance. They state that on-line consumer behaviour research is
a new area of academic study in marketing. They state that most of the work in this area has been
done by practitioners and they strongly encourage further academic research and learning from
the data of on-line research. Following their motivation, an on-line questionnaire targeting
Internet users constituted the data collection instrument of the present study. (Barlow 1990) has

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discussed strengths and weaknesses in strategic planning. Strengths combine a top down
business analysis approach with a bottom up implementation strategy, it represents an integrated
methodology.
In the field of IT strategic planning, some formal representational ontology’s exist (Austin Tate,

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1998), but are not, in our experience, expressive enough to adequately represent the strategies
identified in this project. Instead, we have taken the approach of authoring representations that
might best be described as pre formal, somewhat similar in format to the work of previous

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researchers in this area.

The Perspective of Strategic Information Systems Planning

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In order to put the planning for strategic information systems in perspective, the evolution of
information systems according to the three-era model of John Ward, et al. (1990) is pertinent.
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Applications in the overall Data Processing (DP), Management Information Systems (MIS) and
Strategic Information Systems (SIS) area need to be planned and managed according to their
existing and future contribution to the business. A portfolio model derived from McFarlan (1984)
considers the contribution of IS/IT to the business now and in the future based on its industry
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impact. Based on this model applications are divided into four categories, as shown here:
 Strategic: Applications those are critical for future success.
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 Turnaround: Applications which may be of future strategic importance.
 Factory: Applications which are critical to sustaining existing business.
 Support: Applications which improve management and performance but are not critical
to the business.
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Strengths

 Perisher blue has the largest terrain i.e. its area is comprised of 12-km square. It has the
facilities of Perisher Valley, Smiggin Holes, Mount Blue Cow, and Guthega
 It has the greatest number of lifts

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 It contains the most reliable snow in Australia which is used for the skiing purposes and
has pre-eminent technology installed in its premises
 A high quality customer service is its benchmark. Perisher has always strived for the
excellent and superior services for its customer.

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 It has produced an award winning ski slope master plan. It addresses the provision of ski
lifts and trails, buildings on the slopes, slope grooming operations including snowmaking
and supporting infrastructure such as power, communications and hydraulic services. It

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also addresses the environmental management of the ski slopes, having regard to both
winter and summer periods.
 Ease of access. It is consider as to be a key element of the Perisher Blue’s effort to be

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Australia’s most excellent four- season destination mountain resort
 Perisher caters the needs of broad range of customers from sight-seers to advanced level
skiers and snow-boarders.
 Strong management which is committed to distinguish Perisher Blue by its competitor by
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providing high standards of services to its customers
 Perisher Blue has modern hardware and updated software systems to complement their
services.
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 Electronic email system is in place.

Weakness
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 In order for the resort to function at its optimal levels, all four skiing fields must interact
with each other. In fact the whole plan is based on the strategic approach in which one
part enforces the functioning of the other part, so if one area of the organization suffers it
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will damage the performance of the whole organization

 Lack of computerized ticketing platform, which cause lot of hassle to it’s visitors and
results in long quos.

 Lack of use of computerized system efficiently and effectively of the operations are not
achieved through the currently installed hardware and software system

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Opportunity

 IT infrastructure must be designed to hold planned visitation levels, be able to do so
under adverse conditions, and be of a standard that complements the world class facilities

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in the village and on the mountain
 State of the art IT infrastructure may be used to decreased customers hassle with dealing

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the identification card and could increased customer satisfaction
 The ski resort market is expected to remain strong with predictions of 2.0%, 3.0% and
4.6% growth over the next 25years. Keeping in view this long-term growth trend in the
ski market Perisher Blue can exploit the opportunities by having proper facilities in place.

market.

Threats Pa
In this way it’ll be able to capitalize on its services getting a larger share of growing
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 The market is very competitive and numbers of competitors are providing services. Its
main competitor destinations are Canberra, Cooma, Berridale, charlotte pass, Mt beauty,
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Hotham and falls creek
 The chance of price war among competitor cannot be ruled out. Due to many competitors
there is a threat to company that competitors might low the price in order to attract more
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visitors to their respective destination and which might result in loss of revenue due to
low price strategy in order to compete with the rivals
 Failures of the IT can put whole system on halt. The company has been emphasizing
more and more on building computerized system but even a minor problem in on part of
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the system can affect the whole operational process of the company adversely
 The business is highly dependent on weather condition, high wind can reduced the
capacity of the lift but can also create sever issues when the show is artificial. So
unfavorable weather condition is always a big concern for the company.

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Approach towards the Perisher Blue strategic plan

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Perisher Blue has already installed a state of the art IT equipment including both hardware and
software system but still company has not been able to cash it investment effectively and
efficiently. The company has a huge area of terrain under strategic plan which includes four

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areas. The strategy company wants to adopt is by achieving the following objectives i.e. To
enable greater access to lifts and resort facilities, To ensure that the company’s technology
utilization is appropriate and is capable of managing the movement of visitors within the resort,

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To ensure that business operations continue to achieve an effective and competitive level of
operation. The company has great expertise in artificial snowmaking and restaurants. IT has
never been core strength of this company. So I would recommend the company to outsource its
IT department to a company which has proven track record IT infrastructure development and
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maintenance. This would certainly help company to focus more on its core business and let the
outsourcing company to take care of the IT system. The IT system can fixed computerized chip
on the skiing rode and this would help the visitors not to take out their gloves and get into hassle
for identification purpose and the customers can also be tracked through satellite system with the
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help of this micro chip and this would also serves the purpose of the company to give their
customers a unique hassle free experience.
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The potential suppliers for the Perisher blue could be as follows:

Hardware Software
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IBM Microsoft
HP-Compaq IBM
Dell Oracle
Intel

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Business Flow Chart

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REFERENCES

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 McFarlan, F.W. (1984), “Information Technology Changes the Way You Compete,”
Harvard Business Review, pp. 98-105

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 Austin Tate (1998), A. Tate. Roots of SPAR - Shared planning and activity representation.
Knowledge Engineering Review, 13, 121-128.


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Mintzberg, H. (1993), Structure in Fives: Designing Effective Organizations. Englewood
Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
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 Miller and Cardinal (1994), The strategic planning process and performance relationship,
available at http://www.entrepreneur.com/tradejournals/article/165017895.html, (accessed at
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04/09/2009)


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Kotler, P. (2000), Marketing Management: Analysis, Planning, Implementation and Control,
Millennium edition, Prentice-Hall, Inc.

 Fredrickson, J. (1986). “The Strategic Decision Process and Organization Structure.”
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Academy of Management Review, Vol. 11, pp.280-296.Barlow, J.F. (1990), “Putting
Information Systems Planning Methodologies Into Perspective,” Journal of Systems
Management, pp. 6-9.

 Dr. Kion (2003), ACADEMIC COLLEGE OR SCHOOL STRATEGIC PLANNING
REVIEW available on http://www.irweb3.ucf.edu/SPC/pdf/CollegeAcademicTemplate.pdf,
(accessed at 03/09/2009)

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 Morrisey, G. (1996a). Morrisey on Planning: A Guide to Strategic Thinking, San Francisco:
Jossey- Bass Publishers

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 Morrisey, G. (1996b). Morrisey on Planning: A Guide to Long-Range Planning, San
Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.

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 Ward, John, Griffiths, Pat and Whitmore, Paul (1990), Strategic Planning for Information

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Systems, John Wiley & Sons
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