Modern businesses are more reliant than ever on technology solutions and IT infrastructure. They help businesses be more cost-efficient, productive, and meet evolving customer expectations – all while dealing with economic uncertainty and fluctuating changes. As such, having an IT strategy is arguably more important than ever!
Why IT strategy matters
A good IT strategy and roadmap is the best way to ensure your technology investment aligns with your business goals and needs.
If you’re looking to scale over a short period, for example, you need to create an IT roadmap and ringfence budget to invest in new systems – well in advance. Then you need to consider adoption itself, onboarding, training, and so on.
In this example, if you haven’t planned your IT strategy far enough in advance, there may not be enough ringfenced funds to achieve the growth you need.
In essence, an IT strategy is crucial for maintaining competitiveness and supporting both business resilience and continuity planning.
A strategic plan will also allow you to proactively leverage technology to support your goals, rather than reactively use technology to “put out fires”.
Having a good IT roadmap in place also helps with risk management, as the process of creating your plan will flag potential technological vulnerabilities, which you can then mitigate.
Aligning your IT strategy with your wider organisational goals
For an IT strategy to be truly effective, it needs to align with what you’re trying to achieve at an organisational level – as this ensures your IT investment will contribute to the future success of your organisation.
To achieve this, businesses need to involve their IT lead in both the wider business strategy (not just the IT strategy). This will give them the information and context they need to drive your IT roadmap.
Then there’s mapping your strategy to immediate, medium, and long-term business needs. This means assessing current capabilities, pinpointing gaps, and anticipating future requirements.
A comprehensive IT needs analysis allows businesses to determine where improvements are necessary and how technology can be leveraged to address these areas. A detailed assessment of business needs enables business leaders to identify specific pain points and opportunities for improvement.
By engaging with various stakeholders to understand their needs and expectations, you can ensure that your IT strategy is comprehensive and inclusive of different teams and requirements, as well as overarching business goals.
Why businesses should regularly review their IT strategy isn’t
In our experience, organisations that set an IT strategy once and don’t review it often find their needs have changed by the time they’re halfway through execution!
To avoid this, it’s important to regularly review an IT strategy, with consideration for current and future goals – as well as the wider business strategy. By doing so, you can ensure that you remain synchronised as business priorities change, as well as protected against new and emerging threats that were not around when the strategy was designed.
We highly recommend reviewing your IT strategy regularly throughout the year. For every review, it’s important to consider:
5-part checklist for setting your IT strategy
- Vision and objectives – What are you trying to achieve as a business? And what challenges or opportunities should be considered?
- Assessment of current state of play – How capable is your existing infrastructure in helping you achieve our goals? Are there any gaps or existing solutions you could leverage more effectively?
- Needs analysis – What are the technology needs of your wider business, as well as individual teams and employees?
- Resource allocation – What resources and budget do you need to allow for? What contingencies need to be in place to ensure you stay on track
- Measuring success – What will be monitored, and how will you evaluate if your strategy is working?
Ultimately, businesses need to think of technology as “part and parcel” of what they do, rather than an addition or extension. Those that do will drive the greatest ROI on their technology and time investment and be able to roadmap IT with confidence.
The big question – do you need to outsource to achieve your goals?
Once you understand what you need to achieve with your IT strategy, the next question is: do we have the internal resources/time to deliver this?
If not, it might be time to consider outsourcing to an IT support partner. Depending on your context, you could fully outsource your IT or use a hybrid approach.
For those who fully outsource, they’ll benefit from a broader skillset than their internal team can likely recruit. Meaning you’ll have access to the skills and experience you need to deliver against the projects outlined in your strategy or roadmap.
This can be especially useful for small or medium-sized businesses that may struggle to cover the costs of hiring an in-house IT team, or organisations with limitations when it comes to technology choice. Plus, your IT support partner can share insights that help you to understand where your business compares to others (in the same or similar markets).
For a hybrid approach, you’ll be able to fill skills gaps in your internal team with professionals from your IT provider. Then, you can bring this blended team together to deliver against your roadmap.
If you’d like to discuss how technology could support your business to achieve its goals, or get expert advice on your IT strategy, we can help. Message us on contactus@phoenix47.co.uk to book a quick chat.
