The aim of corporate planning is to manage uncertainties and aid in long term decision making. The planning is done based on the SWOT Analysis of the Organization and the future goals are set for organization. Since planning requires continuous changes and involves huge amount of information exchange between the planning agents, a distributed information processing is required to keep track of various events that involve continuous changes. Distributed Corporate Planning is a planning technique that helps us to achieve this through the applications of Coordination Technologies. Groupware, Workflow Management Systems, Internet and WWW (World Wide Web) are some of the tools involved in developing a Distributed Corporate Planning System.
Decentralization of the Planning process in many organizations helps many sub-processes within the organization being planned by various autonomous agents to connect through some common frameworks, tasks and resources. These events can be summarized into a single common plan which will integrate all the specific plans pertaining to a particular domain together, through an increase in scope of communication and information flow between these parties. This increases the overall workflow for Corporate Planning as it aims in minimizing threats to the organization by eliminating redundancies.
Management Information Systems and Decision Support Systems generate decisions mostly based on data and are not suitable for flexible hierarchical organizations. They support only partial aspects of Distributed Corporate Planning. Group Decision Support Systems aid in planning via the brainstorming and negotiation processes, while Distributed Decision Support Systems support through autonomous information sharing among the planning agents, which suit the requirements of a Distributed Corporate Planning to a great extent.
Three C's of Distributed Corporate Planning
Coordination, Cooperation and Communication are the three tools on which Distributed Corporate Planning is built upon. Coordination is the act of making different people work together harmoniously towards a goal. Groupware is a network that is generally used for facilitating Communication among the groups so that the time, venue and task dimensions are structured properly and information sharing takes place so that continuous formulations for Corporate Planning are discussed and goals have been revised to suit the long term requirements of the organization.
Decentralization of the Planning process in many organizations helps many sub-processes within the organization being planned by various autonomous agents to connect through some common frameworks, tasks and resources. These events can be summarized into a single common plan which will integrate all the specific plans pertaining to a particular domain together, through an increase in scope of communication and information flow between these parties. This increases the overall workflow for Corporate Planning as it aims in minimizing threats to the organization by eliminating redundancies.
Management Information Systems and Decision Support Systems generate decisions mostly based on data and are not suitable for flexible hierarchical organizations. They support only partial aspects of Distributed Corporate Planning. Group Decision Support Systems aid in planning via the brainstorming and negotiation processes, while Distributed Decision Support Systems support through autonomous information sharing among the planning agents, which suit the requirements of a Distributed Corporate Planning to a great extent.
Three C's of Distributed Corporate Planning
Coordination, Cooperation and Communication are the three tools on which Distributed Corporate Planning is built upon. Coordination is the act of making different people work together harmoniously towards a goal. Groupware is a network that is generally used for facilitating Communication among the groups so that the time, venue and task dimensions are structured properly and information sharing takes place so that continuous formulations for Corporate Planning are discussed and goals have been revised to suit the long term requirements of the organization.
E-Mail, Conferences, Bulletin Boards form part of Communication Systems. Workflow Management systems provide the necessary support structures to design, execute and manage planning process so that coordination functions are handled properly. The information passes from one person to another without any time-lag and clearly specifies the expected targets from all the parties involved. Workgroup Computing involves Planning Systems, Electronic Meeting Systems, Sharing Tools, and Hypertext-Systems.
Shared information Systems are driven by the idea that all these systems should be viewed as a medium for Information Sharing rather than a mechanism through which information can be shared across various planning agents. They allow sharing of objects such as documents, tables, graphics or spreadsheets. For example, the recent emergence of a World Wide Web of hypertext documents accessible over the Internet has provided new possibilities for the information sharing and exchange.
In Integrated Business Information Systems, Corporate Planning processes are executed through knowledge intensive processes and interactions are sophisticated involving information sharing and exchange, negotiation and coordination between various agents, to manage interdependencies and streamline the different business processes into a single common plan to continuously revise these objectives in coherence with the long term goals of the organization. An agent-based business process management involves Distributed Corporate Planning and can be described as a more robust and scaleable approach when compared to a Conventional Workflow Management.
Reference:
Yu L., Beat Schmid and Stanoevska-Slabeva K. (1998): Supporting Distributed Corporate Planning through New Coordination Technologies.
