What exactly is a solid IT strategy?

An IT strategy helps an organization identify, organize, execute its IT goals in the context of a rapidly changing technology environment. An effective strategy begins with a keen understanding of the business goals and the initiatives the business has put in place to support those goals.

In other words, an IT strategy states how IT needs to change, evolve, and support those initiatives to achieve specific business goals. Everything that IT does should support those business goals. A strategy puts that on paper, puts it in context, and is always evolving.

When do Most Organizations Need a Solid IT Strategy?

A couple of critical factors bring organizations to a point where they need to rethink their plans and develop a solid IT strategy.

One of the fundamental reasons most organizations need a solid IT strategy is frustration with a lack of support or lack of results from IT.

Businesses sometimes create initiatives they want to implement to achieve their goals. But whenever they turn around for IT support, IT is working on the wrong thing. They are not aware of what’s happening. They aren’t involved in how things function and their role in supporting those initiatives.

Also, any significant change in a business can drive an IT strategy. Let’s say you’re trying to improve your business and increase value in your business. The initiatives you put in place for sales, marketing, production, or anything else — almost all of them need IT support.

When you realize that you’re on a long-term plan to make business changes, you need a long-term plan to make IT changes to support those business changes.

Connecting with Your IT Provider

Usually, the driver for a strategy is not so much frustration with IT in terms of the people doing the IT work, it’s that sense that we’re not connected. You have business goals, and you have an IT department, and the two aren’t working together to achieve those goals.

When we do roadmap presentations or strategy presentations, there’s often a look of surprise in small-medium business owners’ faces when we say what, to us, are obvious things.

“The IT department is here to support your business goals.”

“You’re not in the business of IT, you’re in the business of producing widgets.”

“If all this spending is not contributing to building better, faster widgets, then what’s the spend for?”

They’re always surprised by the idea that an IT department can contribute significantly to business growth. IT can support initiatives, it’s not just for fixing problems.

Telltale Signs You Need an IT Strategy

When organizations don’t have an IT strategy in place, or they haven’t paid much attention to IT in the last few years, there are some telltale signs.

First, there’s usually a technical debt. Things have not been maintained over time. And that manifests itself in user issues and other problems.

If you neglect your IT infrastructure for five years, for example, things will start to fail. When they begin to fail, senior management realizes that something is wrong. That frustration level starts the drive toward something better.

Another source of frustration can be with the quality, success, and speed of the initiatives they’re trying to implement. Almost everything a business changes involves some kind of IT component. If you have a three-month deadline for a new initiative, you need to be talking to IT long before then.

Without a strategy, there’s no real communication between the business side and the IT side. If IT isn’t involved with the strategy, they’re just waiting for something to go wrong instead of actively contributing.

The sooner you connect your IT strategy with your business goals, the faster you’ll meet your business goals, and the less cost you’ll incur in achieving those goals.

An IT strategy is a valuable contributor to your business. If you own a business and you work with your IT provider closely via a mutually shared strategy document, you’ll get where you need to go more quickly, smoothly, and efficiently. That’s how we add value.

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