IT strategy is a comprehensive action plan that clarifies how you structure and use information technology to best support your business goals.
It’s easy to spot those businesses with a healthy, glossy-coated, waggy-tailed IT strategy. They’re the ones that seem to do their thing faster, better, more profitably, and just magically thrive despite whatever the world throws at them. Heck, their customers even queue up on social media to slather them in glittery, holographic reviews.
But rather than resent the crap out of those businesses, why not join them? Your perfect IT strategy is waiting to jump out from behind a bush at you, so let’s find out more about what IT strategy is, what a good one does, and how you can get started.
What Is An IT Strategy?
We love this question because a robust IT strategy is what makes everything better. You’ve got your business on one side, and the whole world of technology on the other. Your IT strategy is your go-to figurative Magic 8 Ball/secret recipe that knits them together in the right way to build the right thing.
So, What’s IT Governance, Then?
IT governance gives you a decision-making framework for how your IT strategy operates. We’ve already memorably illustrated this in 1930s gangster script format for your pleasure, but here’s another way of looking at it. IT governance keeps your IT strategy driving straight by:
- Ensuring there are adequate resources behind IT operations.
- Continually improving and measuring IT strategy performance – is your strategy doing what it’s supposed to do?
- Defining roles and accountabilities within your IT function.
- Providing a way of horizon-scanning for IT innovations that might be useful to adopt.
- Guiding decisions about potential new projects and IT investments. Is BYOD too risky? IT governance will decide.
There’s a direct relationship between your business strategy, your IT governance, and your IT strategy.
Your Job As The IT Strategist
The job of your awesome-cool strategy brain is to create an action plan that transforms or optimizes your current IT ecosystem into one that best delivers on business goals.
Your IT should do its best for what your company does best. What you do depends on where you’re starting from. Maybe your IT ecosystem just needs a tiny tweak. Or maybe you need to throw the whole thing in the IT eco-dumpster and start again. Whatever you’re up to, the core tasks every IT strategist must do to create a living, breathing IT strategy are:
- Think
- Plan
- Do
Step 1: You Better Think
Creating Your IT Strategy: Thinking Tasks
Understanding what’s needed. You’ll work to understand what the business goals are: if they’re wooly, ask questions. Check out the business plan and what your IT governance suggests. Are you going for growth? What does this mean in practice? Are you expanding into new products or location markets? What does this mean for headcount, or business processes? Also, take a peek into current and future market challenges. Is new legislation looming? Are you aiming for bigger clients, which may mean tighter compliance requirements?
Identifying the flavor of IT. You’ll need to take on the requirements of your business strategy and everything you researched during the understanding process. You might need a drop of horizon-scanning – what’s evolving that might be useful for the future?
Evaluating how your IT infrastructure currently serves your people. Are there gaps and roadblocks, e.g., data lost through shoddy backups; systems so sloooooow that people could write their first novel while waiting to log on; or a ton of shadow IT because you don’t have an IT procurement strategy?
Step 2: Make Plans
Creating your IT strategy: Planning tasks
Plan the steps required to optimize your current IT ecosystem or adopt new technologies. Let’s say that HIPAA accreditation is one of your strategic targets that will serve your business goal of entering the healthcare market. Here’s where you plan your HIPAA assessment: finding a HIPAA assessor, supporting them, and remediating the gaps that they may find. Don’t forget to plan the timeline and add in contingencies because everyone and their donkey knows that stuff always takes longer than you think.
Assess the risks of any changes and how you’ll mitigate them. For instance, if you plan to dump your in-office servers and change to cloud-only backup, make sure you plan to create multiple copies of your data before you commit to the cloud.
Make sure you have the resources for your IT strategy in terms of people, time, dollars, and infrastructure – and, hopefully, senior management support. Your IT strategy is an integral part of improving the business, so common sense suggests you should be fully resourced. IT governance should have covered this.
Communication is hugely important, as you’ll need the cooperation of pretty much everyone. Sometimes there’ll be downtime. Sometimes your people will need to learn new systems – perhaps even systems they’ve been gagging for. If you’re clear about what’s happening and why, provide updates, and gather feedback on your planning, you’ll have bigger buy-in, and implementing all those changes won’t be so terrifying.
Step 3: Do The Things
Creating your IT strategy: Doing tasks
After all the great prep you’re done, it’s time to act. You may be deploying something simple, such as reconfiguring devices to improve security. Maybe you’re integrating a new sales platform with your stock and logistics data. Or maybe you’re going for the whole enchilada, like going green or creating a brand new IT ecosystem for a newly remote workforce (who need training, btw). If you’ve got a robust change management plan, as well as a thorough testing environment, pat yourself on the head and give yourself extra points. Gold star for you!
Let’s Get Started On Your Fabulous New IT Strategy
If you already have an IT strategy, we’re super-pumped about it because IT strategies are our thing. Let’s compare notes. If you don’t already have an IT strategy, let us help you with yours. No overwhelm. No fancy talk. Just decent, almost-house-trained geeks helping you do great things for your business.
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