A Study Of Information System Planning In NW Company

In the context of global economic integration, companies are facing increasingly intense competition. Information Technology (IT) & Information System (IS) have become powerful weapons to gain the competitive edge for a company. Information system planning will function as a fundamental guideline for the establishment of the information system in a company. It is also a prerequisite to design and then run a company's information system. So it plays an important role in the development of a company's information system.NW Company is one of the earliest companies that invested in China mainland. With its growth, it has nearly 30 stories in China at present and it is on the way of chain management. But scarce of information system planning and lag of information system supporting are not suitable for its rapidly growth. So information system planning is important and necessary for NW Company.This thesis focuses on the information system planning in the case of NW Company. Firstly, it gives a brief of the theory of information system planning and study situation in China and foreign. Especially, we describe the methods of SST, CSF and BSP that will be employed later. Then it introduces the history and the present situation of NW Company and based on the theories and methods of the strategic management, it analyses its industrial background, the competition inside and outside the company and its competitiveness. The analysis will lead to a clear definition of its competitive strategy. Secondly, it introduces the situation and capacity of the information system in NW Company and illustrates its external environment and development trend. Thirdly, it analyses and plans the company's information system through the methods of SST, CSF and BSP. To make the alignment between mission and vision of information system and business strategy with the method of SST; To find out and focus on critical success factors with the method of CSF; To analyse business process and data type with the method of BSP. Finally, based on the above analysis, the thesis offers the overall planning of NW Company's information system and further plan the company's recent IT projects. It also gives out some suggestions on how to deal with risks. At the last part of the thesis, we summarise and draw some conclusions such as information system planning is very important to deal with the problems that will be happened in information system construction; Information system planning is a part of business strategy and it must align with business strategy and so on.The research methods and conclusions of the article will serve not only as the guideline for the designing and running of the information system of NW Company but also as a reference for its counterparts in the similar development phase.