Paper 3 - Abstract


ABSTRACT
There is a widespread concern in organisations that investment in IS does not deliver value and that many IS projects do not meet business objectives. IS expenditure is regarded by senior managers to be both costly and risky and yet there are few formalised ways that managers use to substantiate this feeling. Many IS investments appear to go ahead without the use of formal investment appraisal and risk management techniques. Often the specification and implementation is left to the IS professionals which case history shows can lead to disaster. This paper uses a case study based in a local authority who were seeking to implement an Office Automation (OA) system to consolidate and integrate the many, often disparate, departmental systems that had evolved over the recent years. The senior staff perceived that the introduction of OA would improve both the efficiency and the effectiveness of the organisation since it would impact favourably not only on the standard use of technology but also on the standardisation of the working environment and the business culture. The case study examines how the IS investment was undertaken and focuses on the basis for management’s ‘perception’ that the OA system would achieve the managers’ objectives. The findings and the resulting learning from the case study are used together with appropriate sources from the literature to consider the value and benefits of IS to address a number of key strategic issues. The paper concludes with a tentative framework which although based on a local authority case may be generally useful to IS professionals, IS researchers/academics and importantly to those senior managers not in IS whose decisions currently lack formality on this issue.