Business Systems Planning and Business Control Study

in the course of their analyses. Underlying the BSP and BICS analyses are the data management problems that result from systems design approaches that optimize the management of technology at the expense of managing the data. Iri comparing BSP and BICS, jive similarities and five diflerences are selected for discussion, and, finally, the strengths and weaknesses of each methodology are noted. The choice between using one or the other methodology is strongly influenced by the immediate intent of the study sponsor, tempered by the limiting factors currently surrounding the BICS methodology. Business Systems Planning (BSP)' and Business Information Control Study (BICS)~ are representative of enterprise analysis tools that are growing in importance and are likely to become mandatory for any business that continues to grow and evolve. BSP and BICS have common roots in their attempts to describe a business at the enterprise level in terms of its information characteristics. As our understanding of information systems evolves, it is becoming clear that some enterprise-level description of a business unit is required for several reasons. First, there is a requirement to select information system resource investment opportunities that hold the greatest relative potential benefit for the business unit as a whole. Therefore, some comprehensive identification of enterprise-wide opportunities for employing information technologies must be made in order to establish a context within which the relative assessment can be made. Second, because of the necessity to produce short-term results in any given enterprise, there is a requirement to design and build large numbers of small systems. To avoid high costs of redesign for integration purposes, the small systems should be built in such a Copyright 1982 by International Business Machines Corporation. Copying is permitted without payment of royalty provided that (1) each reproduction is done without alteration and (2) the Journal reference and IBM copyright notice are included on the first page. The title and abstract may be used without further permission in computer-based and other information-service systems. Permission to republish other excerpts should be obtained from the Editor.