Why Does Sisp Fail

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

This paper is discussing about Strategic Information System Planning (SISP) during the implementation and why does it fail. Before SISP start, it requires complete understanding from all areas such as nature of organization, current information technology, culture of people, the environment (internal and external), technical and managerial understanding and SISP planning by thinking holistically. During the planning phase, critical area has been defined, analyzed and tabulated in understand format so all key person will fully aware their roles, responsibility and execute what has been planned. Anyway in implementation stage, it will be totally different because organization will face the live or actual implementation where expected or unexpected issue will be raised. The team needs to focus and solve accordingly within the deadline. Definitely this situation will challenge not only to key personnel to solve but also to SISP committee and organization as well.

Keyword: SISP, Strategic, Planning, Implementation, Failure

With fierce of global competition in corporate world, every companies facing challenges not only in uncertain of economic but also information technology become competitive and rapidly changing significantly the internal and external environment. No doubt that these factors playing significant effect to the success organization’s strategy in order to survive and succeed in the business. To stay one a head step of competitor and stay profitable and closer to the customers required a continuous effort to close gap the inefficient and ineffective of internal process. Therefore, there is need to improve existing Information System (IS) to more strategic IS plans which emphasize to align business strategy and current IS (Alan Warr, 2003). At this stage SISP play important roles because of SISP is the process of organized workflow where company decides which computer system and IS able to assist the company to support and achieve their business strategic objectives (Michael J Earl, 1993). The process will formulate and incorporate formulating IS objectives, streamline strategies and creating policies to achieve the alignment. Design and develop the details plans to ensure the effectiveness the strategies and policies. Analysis for short, mid and long term to forecast possible and expected changes of computer based system and business strategy where the organization will ready and prepare with contingency plan within their control including financial aspects. The contingency plan will include budgeting, human resource, and technical aspect including hardware and software capabilities (Abduallah Basahel, 2008).

The SISP process can be categorized by scale, depend to organization size; larger scale, comprehensive studies or by ongoing, smaller-scale ones. It is up to the organization either follows their own customized workflow or existing methodologies, well-defined and documented methodologies. SISP consist of group or committees of users from various departments and IS expertise (Fahad N. Al-Aboud, 2011). An organization also can hire the external consultant if their budget permissible where external team will have more experience and expertise in giving an advice to committee. Normally consultant will use existing methodologies as a guideline which includes coaching, guidance and training. The committee will study and analyze the current or existing computer based system including applications, hardware, and software and infra structure to support the changes. Therefore improper and insufficient study can be viewed as detrimental to the success of SISP. Committee members must focus and carefully plan the SISP comprehensiveness that can coach and guide the organization during the implementation.

Predictors of SISP Implementation

There are many variables can influence the success of SISP. Vedabrata Basua, Edward Hartonoa, Albert L. Lederera and Vijay Sethib, (2001) outlined three independent variables in their study which are organizational commitment, senior management involvement and team involvement.

Organizational commitment

Organizational commitment means higher management position such as Board of Director (BoD), Chief Operating Officer (CEO), Managing Director (MD) or General Manager (GM) support for the SISP implementation. The commitment can be the readiness of sufficient of resources such as enough financial as requested by the SISP committee and providing enough man power including suitable workplace and infrastructure. Commitment is required from higher ranking as to closely monitor, questioning, resolve if any issue or conflict involved. Especially project sponsor and owner have funded amount of money to be spent to achieve SISP objective. Normally higher management expecting positive result as presented to them during the early stage of SISP planning. The commitment must be shown to ensure the effective of SISP. Without these commitments, it could become a major problem that effecting SISP success.

Senior Management Involvement

This is top executive position that leads and operates the business unit within the organization. They determine how company can follow business strategy by setting up planning strategies. Top-down instructions to their subordinates to support business strategy and align with SISP scope, objectives and approaches. Senior Management must also gain commitment from operational level throughout the process. Their involvement is required to solve any conflict or issue raised during the implementation. There could be process re-engineering required and their decision is required before any changes can be made. Their experience on business operation and IS playing critical factor to determine the SISP success. Senior management involvement has been shown to lead the higher rate of SISP success. Without senior management involvement and understanding could lead to major impediment to SISP implementation. It was proven that lack of senior management understanding has even led to major SISP failure.

Team Involvement

The group of peoples consists of user manager and information system professionals. It is very important the involvement from both groups in drafting and advising the SISP implementation. During the initial stage, all inputs were gathered from all organizational levels and tabulated for SISP implementation. All teams must be aware and requires commitment and involvement especially when business process re-engineering is required during the process. The selection of SISP team members are based on their competence including experiences not only their availability and knowledge on organizational operational. Moreover, training the IS personnel about organizational objectives and key issues so they can better understand and support users. This including providing the training to SISP team members which consist from various business unit. Clear outline on SISP objectives, vision and mission, scope and goals will ensure the success rate of SISP implementation.

Why SISP Implementation Fail

There were many reasons why SISP implementation failed. Researchers found frequent reason that always in the raised issue was management commitment to SISP. Is it quite impossible to any failure SISP project, if this issue is not highlighted. Sometimes in many corporate companies, SISP objectives remain as slogan or declarative. As a result, SISP remain in the piece of paper rather than implemented and hence that the reason why SISP fail. They’re not believe that SISP can change the company environment, creating competitive advantage, increase revenue, creativity and innovation of the product, could be a reason for higher executive position in proactive in their action (T. Hovelja, A. Rožanec & R. Rupnik, 2010). In the each great success story of SISP that management commitment and involvement, success is almost guaranteed.

Lack of commitment from senior management

As mentioned in above paragraph, that commitment from senior management plays important roles in SISP implementation success. Their critical roles of in setting up the business direction so top executive inside the organization able to follow their direction (Vedabrata Basua, Edward Hartonoa, Albert L. Lederera, Vijay Sethi, 2001). Basing on SISP planning, resources either financial or man power need to provide in order SISP can start. Higher management not only fulfills all SISP committee member requested but at same time analyze and set the goal. With management commitment, active participation and close monitoring to SISP implementation will predict the SISP success. Without commitment from top management will result not enough resources and infra structure as well. The workplace becomes not conducive and creating unhealthy environment especially on culture and environment. There are no two ways of communication and cooperation between different departments and different stakeholders which have specific information needs and opinions about IT issues.

Lack of alignment with business objectives

Vision, mission and objectives of the company, is the strategic business planning that represents the most complex and complete process. It is chain re-action process and continuous control of external and internal environment with existing enterprise components. The process covered from environment scanning, strategy formulation, strategy implementation and strategy evaluation and control (Petter Gottschalk, 1998). By looking at environmental scanning including current and short term of economy climate, what are competitor doing, demand of the market and product innovation. The quality of top management was measured from the above four processes and how it can be align with the IT usage and the efficiency in the enterprises. With lack of alignment with business objectives will move the company to nowhere.

Lack of senior management involvement

This including senior management with lack of decision makers in the execution of SISP. The decision maker should attend at least monthly or quarterly meeting. During the meeting, they should closely monitor and resolved if any issue especially when involve with other department. Their involvement also required when process need to change and re-engineered as consensus from higher authority is required. On the areas of top management involvements are, the initiative of the commitment to change, controlling the SISP implementation and the initial stage of regular updates of the SISP plan.

IS management is not part of the corporate planning process

Most of time, many companies unable to consider IT as a technology tools in their achieving business objective. They are more focusing to business strategy direction and increasing revenue through sales and marketing without realizing IT can become their weapon to synchronize these two arms. IT only limited to operational level of planning and was not considered as important competitive strategic advantages. However, the trend has significant change and now IT is considered compulsory technology and collaborate each other with four phases of strategic planning; environment scanning, strategy formulation, strategy implementation and strategy evaluation and control. IT changed completely the process of the making of goods in the enterprises. No doubt that IT has become essential for the top management to realize IT capabilities in helping managing the SISP and capturing the potential of IT (Pita Zijad, Cheong, France & C. Brian , 2003).

Budget limitation

Most of projects including SISP must adhere to a budget. Example of building the house, cost is required for proposed solution including house plan and materials and also all the resources required in building in complete cycle. Even in the early stage, SISP plan might facing a setback when the budget proposed was cut or slash due to certain reason. The reasons are financial constraint or challenges given by the higher management. Not all companies have luxury financial and work within financial constraint. Therefore proposed budget need to align with company financial capabilities. Taking consideration the climate of economy was not good and affecting all companies and it happen during SISP implementation. The organization has no choice and need to re-act fast in order to survive in economic recession. The impact from the budget limitation not only coming from the financial aspect but also resources such as man power and materials.

No adequate knowledge and expertise

The quality from personnel such as good personality and their competences not only in their field but also project management can lead to successful management of IT. The success from this combination will result with high quality in timing and cost. The team is not only consists of expertise from their field but also from higher management. A few issues such as training, experiences and qualification must be considered during the SISP planning. Taking this lightly will produce uncertainty in SISP implementation. Extra investment is required if company want to take external consultant in managing IT projects. By selecting good quality from knowledge and experience for project leaders and team members from the various departments soon recognized as a critical SISP success factor (Tamir Bechor, Seev Neumann, Moshe Zviran, Chanan Glezer, 2010). In SISP implementation, the competence of project leaders and team members includes not only from technical aspects but also from spiritual such motivational, positive thinking and think out-of-box. User training is a good practice in leveraging knowledge to the user. The knowledge not only gains from the experience but also from training. Therefore if organization paying more attention to the training in the SISP training, it will becomes a good predictor of the success of SISP implementation. On top of training, key user involvement in SISP process, user will have broader and better understanding on the important of SISP objectives. With this understanding, their resistance to change will be reducing as they can see the whole and better picture.

Inadequate framework used for setting IT investment priorities

There are two options available for the enterprise when designing and implementing an IS. Enterprise can adapting the newly designed IS to the organization and create new business competitive advantage. With local team from managing and development as the team understand local requirement. Or organization can buy an IS that available in the market that fits to their business direction. In term of timing, the enterprise already save the period of development but from another aspect that current IS might not able to cater all requirements. Sometime, it required some customization by local or by the vendor. Without proper planning and analyzing before deciding which IS option, will creates less benefits. Strict monitoring of additional cost for customization and technical changes by top management to ensure adequate framework installed for future expansion. Enterprise might lose the opportunity in term of competitive advantage and unable to gain new features when deployed the new IS. There were chargeable items for annual maintenance, regular updates and patches by the software vendor which possible raise the cost of IS upkeep. As project was adhered to limited of budget, the hidden cost will increase even though the SISP implementation was success. The SISP success measurement was measured from time and cost. Even though the project was completed within time but amount of cost was increase.

No motivation for the initialization of SISP reviews

The SISP implementation duration will depend to size of SISP project. Some SISP project can last to five years and short term will be one to three years. Either short or long term, definitely it required a mechanism to constant control as other factor need to be considered such as financial aspect and the deadline. Top management involvement is essential as constant control and overall evaluation to entire SISP phases (Alan Warr, 2003). It is normal in any project, a lot of issues and problems raised along the way. This issue need to resolve and fix and failure to solve it not only dragging the implementation but also giving an impact to employee motivation. This situation make workplace environment become tense and pressure mountain up with problem which already identified and still pending for resolution. Through this control, enterprise able to create and establish a good practice in SISP learning loop. The control and evaluation of the SISP process plays significant impact to SISP success.

Inappropriate planning horizons

Design and implementation stage contribute significant factor to overall success predictor in SISP. The planning horizons for change management start from establishing IS goal, planning hardware and software functionality, determining suitable applications and managing and monitoring the change from old platform to new platform. The technical conversion not limited to know-how but also required specific detail know-how which required knowledge from internal or external expertise. This including setup the new IS able to collaborate with future expansion including additional budget, man power and reliable and robust infrastructure. These two change factor need to be monitor from beginning till the end so clearer task attribution and responsibility among internal stakeholders either at higher executive management and IT management. Even though design and implementation phase is inter related but each component have their own predictor and analysis that need tabulated to internal stakeholders.

Failure to consider the external business environment

Analyzing external business environment has become critical field in SISP planning as external factor may change dynamically. Looking at the economic globalization either economic recession and peak time playing important roles in any IT projects. In fact IT strategies also may change especially at computer technology and infrastructure. Therefore enterprise needs to align between current business and IT strategies. This perspective will create competitive advantages where it mostly use by enterprises in the planning, The IT deployment indentified four major areas where it able to creates strategic opportunities; improvement of operational efficiency and functional effectiveness which for internal to the enterprise whereby product innovation with IT, exploitation of inter organizational synergies and acquisition of bargaining advantage over one’s customers and suppliers for external. Detail of the know-how and expertise needed to develop and align the external and internal IT strategies and business differ. Both alignments need to monitor through a single point of measure that could significantly impair the ability of enterprises to address and detect the underlying causes of misalignment (Albert L. Lederer, Joseph M. Katz & Vijay Sethi, 1988).

Conclusion

Researchers identified the main reason of SISP failures was the lack of higher executive position involvement and commitment. To ensure SISP objectives achievable and success with great story, planning modules, commitment and involvement from various level, managerial and operation should be part of the SISP study and analysis. Creativity and process re-engineering are required when dealing with limited time and resources. Redundant process or work can be eliminated if both process clearly defined and lead by suitable stakeholders who can lead to successfully SISP. In all SISP phases, higher management commitment and support is necessary especially to crucial and critical phase, implementation which more important than at the start of SISP. The percentage of SISP success is expected to increase if it was lead, monitor and control by Chief Information Officer (CIOs) rather than CEOs. CIOs have an advantage to drive the business strategy and re-align with IS where they participate in business planning and in position to have better understanding of corporate strategy and promoting healthy aspects of SISP. Another strong reason of SISP failure was lack of learning review which playing significant factor in SISP implementation.