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Elements of IS strategy

Ward and Griffiths (1996) suggest that an IS strategy plan contains three elements:

1 

Business information strategy. How information will support the business. This will 

include applications to manage particular types of business.

2 

IS functionality strategy. Which services are provided?

3 

IS/IT strategy. Providing a suitable technological, applications and process infrastructure 

(see Chapter 3).

The advent of digital business clearly increases the strategic importance of information systems 

resources of an organisation. However, developing an IS strategy to achieve digital business 

goals is complex because it can be viewed from many different perspectives (Table 5.12). This 

table is essentially a checklist of different aspects of IS strategy that have to be implemented 

by an IS manager in the digital business. Many of these aspects are solutions to business and 

technical problems that are described in Parts 2 and 3 of this book as summarised in the table.

We will now consider one of the most important issues facing IS managers in more detail.