Why do I need an IT Strategy for my business?

Introduction

IT Strategy is one of those topics that comes up repeatedly and generates the highest levels of interest in our Blog. This article explains the importance of having a defined strategy and its relationship with the Business Plan.

 

Why Do We Need an IT Strategy?

For most businesses a network outage is considered a disaster as people just can’t work. A network related problem in 2011 brought RIM (Blackberry) tumbling down from a market dominant $80 Billion business to the point of bankruptcy. We rely on technology so much for day to day operations but surprisingly few companies actually have an IT Strategy!

In business today productivity is the name of the game. As a very simplistic example a small business with £10 million per year in sales would, assuming 250 business days per year, potentially lose £40,000 for each day it could not function. A straight line calculation such as this is not going to be accurate but will hopefully help to encourage you to push developing an IT Strategy up the list of priorities!

 

How to Build an IT Strategy

There are four key steps:

• Agree where you are and where you want to be.
• Develop an IT strategy and ensure that it aligns to your Business Plan
• Business Continuity Planning
• Prioritize, estimate, execute.

The goal is to have open and honest dialogue about where you are, where you’re going as a company and where you want to be going as a company. Questions to answer include:

• What business are we in?
• What products and/or services do we offer?
• Why do our customers choose us?
• Who are our competitors and what are our competitive advantages and USP’s?
• Where is our profit coming from now and in the future?
• What’s changing? How?

They are very big questions so give them plenty of thought and we would advise some facilitation from an experienced consultant. Don’t overlook that last question as what works today might not work tomorrow if the market changes (e.g. Blockbuster and HMV). You need to get the right people in the room and question all assumptions.

Staying the same is rarely a viable option. Incremental and step changes often need to be made. This is likely to be a very awkward meeting and we would recommend that your MD or CEO is give some coaching to help prepare. You might also decide that outside support would be helpful to facilitate these discussions. Whatever way you approach it you need to exit with a manageable number of key themes and prioritize them. Then, define the projects necessary to support the evolution of these themes.

 

Develop an IT strategy and ensure that it aligns to your Business Plan

The major themes of your strategy necessitate a number of action steps or business projects that are necessary to move the plan forward. Take a close look at each project and determine what IT action steps or enablers are necessary to prepare for and execute that plan. Discuss and evaluate those steps with both internal and external IT resources to gain perspective. If you have a Business Plan cross check against it to ensure that the IT Strategy supports it. If you don’t have a Business Plan then start to build one of these and don’t finish the IT Strategy until it is completed!

 

Business Continuity Planning

Ensure you fully understand the way your current IT systems work along with the issues and risks. If things do fail how fast can you recover and in what order. Have a sensible conversation with all parts of your business to understand your Recovery Point Objectives (RPO). Do a gap analysis of expectations versus capability and define any action plans to address any gaps and risks.

IT security may not show up in the business strategy, but protecting data assets is also critical in ensuring business sustainability and reputation.

 

Prioritize, estimate, execute

Prioritize projects, estimate costs and determine the order and timescales for driving change. As you begin to execute your plan bear in mind that sequencing and pacing matter. Not everything needs to be done all at once and you need to factor in the time required for your business to absorb change. Place reasonable timelines and realistic parameters around each project as you begin to implement your plan.

 

Conclusion

The value in developing an IT Strategy is to link it IT efforts directly to the Business Plan. The strategic planning process requires the leadership team to reach a consensus about the priorities for the business that will support it in realizing its immediate and longer term goals. Many businesses lack both a documented Business Plan and IT Strategy. If you want to be more competitive and better protected from risk then set some time aside to develop both!