Strategic information systems planning: A case study from the financial services industry

Teubner, Alexander

Abstract

Strategic Information Systems Planning (SISP) is an essential topic for managers and researchers alike. However, there is evidence of a gap between SISP research and practice. Taking this situation as a motivation, we conducted an in-depth case study on SISP to investigate this gap. We conducted this study of a German financial services company (FSC) over five months in the summer of 2003. During this time, we studied FSC’s enterprise situation and the information system (IS) practices concerning the SISP approach in place. Our findings confirm the hypothesis that practitioners largely ignore academic literature and do not use it to support their SISP endeavours. This is all the more striking since FSC extensively used guidance from IS research in other fields, such as systems analysis and software development. Our case study examines two possible explanations for the gap: firstly, a lack of transfer of academic knowledge to practice, and secondly, deficiencies in the academic knowledge base itself. Our observations highlight a disconnect between academic discussion and practical conduct. However, we could not confirm that the ignorance of academic literature on SISP is primarily caused by constrained knowledge transfer. To exclude communication barriers, we filtered the academic discussion according to the specific situation and the needs of FSC and translated it into practical recommendations.

Nevertheless, the academic arguments we put forward hardly had any impact, either on IT managers’ thinking or on SISP practice at FSC. Though practitioners sometimes perceived academic literature as inspiring, they did not consider it a touchstone for r academic literature in their SISP practice. In the eyes of FSC’s practitioners, academia ignores the ‘‘real problems’’ and thus is not accredited as a relevant source of advice. Moreover, in a final discussion with FSC’s senior IT executives, we got the impression that the professional identity of FSC’s IT management – specifically the CIO’s role – differed from interpretations prevalent in academia. The academic discussion assumes the CIO to be an initiator of organisational innovations and a driver of business strategy on the board. In contrast, we found that FSC’s CIO perceives his role as a service provider to business. While the different perceptions might be due to idiosyncrasies of FSC, related research provided additional empirical support for the conjecture of misleading academic assumptions about the role of IT management in practice.

Keywords
IT/IS strategy, Strategic Information Systems Planning