College Finder
English flagItalian flagKorean flagChinese (Simplified) flagGerman flagFrench flagSpanish flagJapanese flagArabic flagRussian flagGreek flagDutch flagBulgarian flagCzech flagCroat flagDanish flagFinnish flagHindi flagPolish flagRumanian flagSwedish flagNorwegian flag
By N2H




Critical Success Factors (CSF)

June 28, 2008

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting and have a nice day!

The technique suggests that strategic information requirements can be uncovered by a 3 stage process.

Firstly the identification of a number of critical success factors (CSF).

CSFs are a handful of things within someone’s job that must go right for the organization to flourish. They are the factors that the manager wishes to keep a constant eye on.

Secondly, they pinpoint critical decisions that need to be made.

The determination of the information required to support these decisions

 

 

Example:
The national parts department within a large organization has a basic business strategy of providing superior product support while maintaining an efficient operation that achieves a high return on investment might have:

CSF: Minimize length of time a part is kept in stock

KD: It might decide what quantities must be ordered

IR: it would need order on demand (rate of sale)

Meeting this CSF ensures that the investment in stock is kept low and that part reach dealers quickly. As this examples shows it is necessary to be clear about business objectives before embarking on CSF Analysis. The process of CSF Analysis allows managers, initially senior ones to articulate the needs in terms of their information management control that is absolutely essential to them.

These needs are influenced by factors such as:

  • The industry within which the firm operates
  • The environmental factors such as local politics and economic situations
  • The firm’s industry position
  • The Manager’s position in the management hierarchy.

Prior to the use of CSF there was a rift between the consumers of information i.e. user management and the providers of information i.e. information systems. So CSF can give some guidance on needs in such a way that the effect of the rift is minimized.

CSF must be:

  • Intelligent to senior managers
  • Intelligent to IS/IT Managers
  • Possible to act on (capable of implementation)

CSF Analysis can be applied lower down in the management structure but it gets more and more difficult to articulate as we move down the hierarchy. However, it is generally useful to use several management levels in order to validate the CSF and get a broader picture. Below is an example of the tactical level.

CSF:

  • Effective Management control of people/staff

KDs :

  • Setting performance standards
  • Specification of training needs
  • Determination of whether or not to introduce overtime

IR

  • Performance reporting
  • Budget Allocation
  • Exception reports

Challenges of CSF:

  • The analysis needs very skilled and very perceptive interviewers to do the abstracting of CSF from senior manager.
  • The more removed from the management apex a specific manager is the harder it is to apply CSF analysis. Many managers who are not already involved in strategic planning find CSF analysis too abstract.
  • It is usually impossible to build a true picture of the organization’s information requirements using only CSFs.
  • The decisions resulting from CSF analysis may ignore any resource constraints, surrounding their realization.


Page copy protected against web site content infringement by Copyscape

Written by admin · Filed Under Information technology, Organisations 

Comments

Got something to say?





FireStats icon Powered by FireStats