Assimilation of a strategic information system to gain competitiveness: a neutral format approach

Strategic information systems contribute to enhance managerial understanding in terms of organisational development and business success. In particular, they assist in making timely business decisions and formulating feasible strategic plans. In practice, a strategic information system consists of several modules performing different functions such as strategic prerequisites, strategic directions and so forth. The integration of these modules to form a unified system is an essential task for achieving an efficient as well as effective strategic information system. In today’s business environment, where there are a great variety of standards in various computer systems that make the linking of modules to enable bi‐directional electronic data interchange difficult and costly. This paper attempts to introduce a model which embraces a neutral format approach to realise the efficient and reliable information flow among various modules of a strategic information system. Furthermore, the proposed guidelines for implementing such a system using the neutral format generalisation technique are also covered.