Out-of-date IT strategies prevent companies from responding to changing business needs fast enough.
IT should be an enabler of change within an organization, not an inhibitor. According to Ross, Weill, and Robertson (Enterprise Architecture as Strategy, Harvard Business School Press, 2006), building a ‘foundation for execution’ is crucial. An organization must develop its IT infrastructure and business processes to automate core capabilities, from which it can then be more flexible, and therefore responsive to business requirements. In this way, IT is no longer a bottleneck but instead can enable change within the organization.
Of course, once you have decided that IT is indeed a bottleneck, it is not an overnight process to put an up-to-date IT strategy in place. Furthermore, it is important that an IT strategy is not developed exclusively by the IT department. Every department in the business will be a stakeholder in IT, as well as C-level executives, therefore these leaders must be involved in any review, and also in subsequent decisions.
Factors that need to be taken into consideration when developing an up-to-date IT strategy include compliance and governance issues, any strategic drivers, the requirement for IT to run the organization, and so on. Essentially, an IT strategy needs to support the business on an ongoing basis but also support future unknown capabilities.
There is no prescriptive IT strategy for every organization, as all are affected by a variety of factors. Additionally, developing an up-to-date IT strategy will not be easy; it is important to be prepared for resistance across the business as it will be necessary for the organization as a whole to change, not just IT. However, the benefits that can be gained from reviewing and then updating the IT strategy will be significant.
Source: OpinionWire by Butler Group (www.butlergroup.com)
