Have You Built an IT Strategy that Fits Your Business?

A business that relies on its technology to function needs to do more than make sure that this technology is able to sustain them. This technology should also be primed to help management and staff achieve their business goals.

An IT strategy is a plan that an organization uses to map out how technology should be leveraged and invested in. As a written document, it provides a guide that helps to organize the numerous considerations that an organization needs to take into account as they go about their business processes.

Developing an IT Strategy
Because of this, any complete IT strategy needs to include a variety of different considerations. This means it resembles a blueprint of your IT’s role in the rest of your business that gives your technology a trajectory to follow in the foreseeable future. To accomplish this, any IT strategy should include some reference to the following:

A Departmental Overview
It is important that your IT strategy acknowledges the department that will need to execute it. By identifying the motivating force behind your IT department and assigning objectives to it, you can get a better grasp on the nature of your company and its internal IT resources.

Record of Existing Resources
A key component of developing an effective IT strategy is to maintain a comprehensive and up-to-date record of any and all resources that your current IT has. This includes the pieces that make up your infrastructure, as well as what your IT department has to offer in terms of abilities and skills.

Future Focus
Your IT strategy also needs to account for changes that will most certainly come in the industry. This means it should include information on current budgets and initiatives, as well as spending forecasts, anticipated industry changes, and future projects.

SWOT Analysis
As you document your IT strategy, you should include an evaluation of your current IT’s strengths and weaknesses. This will help you to prioritize different elements in your strategy to make up for potential deficits. In addition, hypothesizing what opportunities you may encounter as IT solutions and processes advance, and anticipating the threats you may encounter as well.

Putting Your IT Strategy in Action
Once these considerations have been made, it’s time to turn your focus to actually enacting your IT strategy. Before you do anything else, you need to assess where your IT stands currently and establish the difference between where it is now and where you want it to be. Benchmarking and identifying the right key performance indicators will help to show you where your biggest IT deficits lie.

As a result, you can identify which of your short and long-term goals will be most useful to strive towards with this particular shift in your IT strategy. However, both you and your technology should be prepared to adjust to a sudden change in your IT strategy and the approach that your strategy informs.

The Importance of an IT Strategy
As the technology that a business leverages has become increasingly impactful upon that business’ success, it has become clear that business needs to have a strategy in mind to optimize it and improve their operations. Otherwise, that business may fall behind another that pays more attention to their technology solutions.

If needed, XFER can assist you in creating an IT strategy for your business, supporting you every step of the way. Give us a call at 734-927-6666 / 800-GET-XFER for more information.