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IT Strategy – bringing it all together

Ashu Bhatia, Director of Delivery  :  21 May 2010 / 4:54 PM  :  0

I often talk to folks within the executive team that seem to be struggling with issues around how to service business needs, how to fund initiatives, which metrics to report, etc. I always bring a simple and powerful framework to consider these questions:

IT Strategy Alignment with Business Strategy – To understand the role that IT plays as an enabler and value partner, we need to start with looking at the following dynamics of the marketplace in the industry:

• How is the industry doing? Industry growth rate, industry margins/pricing, industry challenges – cost pressure/ fear of substitute product/ services, etc.
• Market size and segmentation
• How well does IT support the business

Governance/Funding/ Organizational Capability - After this we should understand the operating model and how decisions are made, enforced, and tracked:

• The decision-making process and its impact on IT’s ability to meet its objectives.
• How are IT services funded in the organization?
• How does the organization evaluate and value proposed IT investments?
• What is the governance structure and business communication managed?
• What is the maturity and readiness of the company’s human assets to perform consistently with the needs of the organization?

IT Processes – After we have looked at the above components to ensure that the IT organization is doing the right things (Strategy and Governance), we focus on doing those things right:

• How effective/streamlined are the processes within the IT Organization - Demand Management, Portfolio
  Management, Risks Management, etc.
• How are solution delivery and resource management processes managed to provide services to the business?
• How is the IT organization creating value for the business through standardization and automation of processes?

IT Optimization
As organizations continue to be challenged by a reduction in IT expenditures, more initiatives are being focused on bottom-line reductions and less on top-line innovative growth. Faced with these conditions, we need to optimize the proliferation of IT assets to support bottom-line savings or the reinvestment of productivity gains towards innovative expenditures.

• Application Portfolio -The state of the company’s applications and their ability to support today’s and tomorrow’s business
• Technology Infrastructure  - The degree of simplicity, uniformity and sufficiency that the company’s technology infrastructure represents

Posted in Enterprise Integration & IT Strategy on 21 May 2010
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Tagged: Business Architecture   Business Value  CIO  IT Planning  IT Strategy  IT to Business Alignment  

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