The practice of information strategy in six information intensive organizations in The Netherlands

The aim of this research is to understand how and why business organizations in the past few years shaped their information strategies and to generalize these observations. To support the data collection in organizations, a research model was used, dividing information strategy into four aspects: environment, process, content and effects. The experiences of three insurance companies and three document processors are described with the help of the model, resulting in six case descriptions of the information strategy practices in these companies over the past five years. We found changes in the information strategies over the period studied, as well as differences between the organizations. Based on the case studies, we propose a phase model of information strategies: during each phase, a period of one to several years, a company shows a specific approach towards information strategy. All six organisations that we studied showed a change of phase in the past five years. We distinguish five phases: turbulence, orientation, consolidation, exploitation, tension. The phases are characterized by means of the aspects of the information strategy model and the six cases are fitted onto the typology. The typology can be used to determine the current position of an organization with respect to information systems planning, and the possibilities to improve or change it.