Corporate Planning includes strategic as well as tactical planning of financial, IT, and physical resources. As shown in the figure, business strategies decide what type of products and/or services are needed (1). The financial, marketing, and other services are outlined to support the business strategy (2). Information systems (ISs) are developed to support products and services and the support systems as shown by arrows 3, 4 and 5. The IT infrastructure in the past was only developed to support the information systems (6). But now, the same IT infrastructure is also used to deliver the products and services as well as the information systems. This is the main shift due to e-business.

The specific functions performed by corporate planning systems are financial planning, IS planning, and physical resources planning.  Most of these planning activities are conducted manually through  meetings, discussions, and interviews between the top management team and the representatives from various functional areas. However, some executive support systems have been developed to support corporate planning.  An example is the Business Plan Pro® 2006 from PaloAlto Software (paloalto.com).