Information Technology Issues:
Assessment of Information Systems
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Template for: Information Technology Issues - Assessment
The purpose of this section is to identify all existing
applications used by the business, to evaluate them, and to provide a brief
definition of each.
The system descriptions presented here should be very brief. In practice,
even a one sentence description of each system is very helpful. Longer
descriptions should be presented in the glossary. Complete systems descriptions
should be maintained in a separate systems document which should be referenced
at the beginning of this SBU strategy document in the section "Other
Relevant Documents."
Referring to the table shown on the template page, the user rating should
indicate the satisfaction level of the users of the system. Users may or may not
like the system because of the user interface, the system functionality, the
reports, and a host of other reasons.
The technical rating refers to the technical design of the system from the
point of view of the information systems professional. The I/S professional may
or may not like the system because of the system architecture, the
maintainability of the system, the ability to enhance the system, and a host of
other reasons.
The future priority rating should indicate whether or not the future of this
system is important to the business. The purpose of this information is to
clearly communicate with the systems department to help them plan for the
overall corporate architecture of the future. Important pieces of information
for developing a future systems architecture plan include knowing which systems
are vital and which systems are either unimportant or need to be replaced.
IBM Consulting; Nolan, Norton and Company; Gemini Consulting; and Arthur
Anderson Company are just some of the leading firms that provide information
systems planning services.
Example of Assessment of Existing Information Systems for Business XYZ
| . . . System Name . . . |
User
Rating
|
Technical
Rating |
Future
Priority Rating |
| General Ledger |
High |
Low |
Very High |
| Customer Prospecting |
High |
High |
High |
| Customer Service Reporting |
Low |
Low |
Very High |
| Vendor Contract |
High |
High |
High |
| Customer Contract |
High |
High |
Moderate |
1. The General Ledger program is a mainframe-based system written in
COBOL that is used by the accounting department in order to maintain the
corporate financial transactions. The system, which was written twenty years ago
by our in-house staff, is poorly designed and a nightmare to maintain. However,
because the user interface is simple to use and customized to meet the needs of
our business, the users are not interested in spending time and money to buy or
develop a new system.
2. The Customer Prospecting program is a PC-based system used by the
sales force to target new customers. It was developed in the first half of 1995
by an outside vendor who used off-the-shelf software for over 90 percent of the
system. The information systems people and the sales force think it's great.
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