Business Systems Planning (IBM Corporation)

1. Business Systems Planning(IBM Corporation) • Initial work on BSP began in the early 1970s. • At first, it was for IBM internal use only; later it was made available to customers. • Its focus on data and especially on processes was an entirely new way to view the firm and to build systems; this process approach has since been copied by many others. • BSP is very comprehensive – and thus time consuming and expensive.

2. Business Systems Planning Designed to define an Information Architecture for the firm. The basic building blocks of the architecture are: • Data Classes • Categories of logically related data that are necessary to support the business • Business Processes • Groups of logically related decisions and activities required to manage the resources of the business

3. Business Systems Planning Steps in the BSP process • Obtain authorization for the study • Assemble the study team • Define the data classes • Define the business processes • Using these data classes and business processes, define the information architecture • Compare this architecture with the present systems and identify missing and/or needed systems • Interview senior management to ensure the architecture is correct and to identify any problems • Establish priorities for each of the major systems contained in the architecture • Prepare the final study report and present it to top management • If approved, initiate the construction of the architecture

5. Business Systems Planning BSP, in addition to its value for I/S planning, also made two other important intellectual contributions: • It helped introduce the process view of the firm. The popular Business Process Re-engineering of the 1990s was built on this concept. • It pointed out the need to de-couple data from the applications that use these data, i.e., data independence. This supported the database approach to systems development.

6. BSP’s BASIC BUILDING BLOCKS Business Process • Groups of logically related decisions and activities required to manage the resources of the business. • Contributed to the process-oriented view of the firm Data Classes • A category of logically related data that is necessary to support the business. • Contributed to the need to decouple data from the applications that use these data.

7. Defining Business Process • Product/service And Resource Life Cycle (used to identify and group the processess) • Requirements activities that determine how much of the product of the product or resource is required, the plan for getting it, and measurement and control against the plan. • Acquisition  activities performed to develop a product/service, or to get the resource that will be used. • Stewardship  activities to form, refine, modify, or maintain the supporting resource and to store or track the product/service. • Retirement  those activities and decisions that terminate the responsibility of an organization for a product or service or the end use of a resource. • Basic Step in Defining Processes • There are three main sources for the identification of the business processes: planning and control, product/service, supporting resource. For product/service and supporting resource, the processes can be defined through their life cycle (requirement,acquisition,stewardship,retirement)

9. Defining Data Class • Using the business resource type approach provide data classes with the same base as business processes, namely business resources. The following figure show the life cycle of resource, and the type of data related to each stage of the life cycle. Planning data Requirement • Inventory data, which maintains the resource status, supports stewardship activities. Transaction data affect change to the inventory data caused by acquisition or disposition activities. Planning data, which represents objectives or expected levels of inventory and volume of transaction, supports requirements activities. At periodic intervals, summary data is extracted from the inventory data and transaction histories to provide feedback on how well requirements have been met. Statistical summary data Disposition Acquisition Transaction data Stewardship Transaction data Inventory data

10. DEFINE AN INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE • Data Classes • Business Processes

16. ANALYZE CURRENT SYSTEMS • Organization (people) • Business processes • Information systems • Data files

17. EXECUTIVE INTERVIEWS • Objectives • Critical Success Factors • Problems • Process/Data/Organization/ System Matrix

18. DETERMINING PRIORITIES • Potential benefits • Impact upon the business • Probability of success • Demand

19. FINAL STEPS • Information Systems Management -- How ready is I/S? • Recommendations and Action Plan • Report results • Follow-on activities