Why does a Small or Medium Sized Businesses need an IT Strategy?

As companies develop, they grow in terms of numbers of staff and turnover. The increasing numbers of staff require organisation, management and control, and communication lines need to be developed for the business to operate. The company will have acquired a number of PCs and will probably have installed a server and a network, supported by a local IT company ‘down the road’. As the company grows larger it is likely to recruit some of its own IT staff to support the technology.

There comes a point where their reliance on accounting, office and email software is insufficient for managing their business. A need has arisen for a step change in their IT capability. This requires due consideration as a significant investment is required.

Bizcit has found that some companies are unclear about how to proceed to manage this important transition. Indeed senior management struggle with finding the time or expertise to evaluate the best way forward. Furthermore their IT departments while staffed with competent technicians are likely to lack some vital business and strategic skills.

A consequence of this is that companies often implement new systems in an unstructured manner that will be more or less successful. The lack of a coherent strategy will probably result in a number of disparate systems being installed that don’t interact very effectively.

This tactical approach can result in reduced or eliminated potential benefits to the company, undermining its attempts for forging a new competitive and profitable organisation. Reasons for this include:

• The company might not have known exactly what is needed in the first place
• The systems solution bought in did not do what was expected of it
• Extra money would have to be spent on corrective measures
• The system might need remedial work or replacement after only a short period.

The need for an IT Strategy at this stage is vital because the company looking to implement its step change in IT stands a greater chance of success of reaping the rewards from its investment.

Companies would benefit from using the skills of a professional IT strategy expert to plan the IT future to be 'right first time'.

What is an IT Strategic Plan?

An IT Strategic plan is a document outlining how IT will enable the achievement of the business goals over a specified period of time. But also, by taking technology trends into account. The document illustrates how IT will position itself to be ’joined up’ with the business and flexible to adapt to changing circumstances in the future.

A company must have a clear idea of its directions, goals and ambitions in order that IT can successfully enable the business to succeed.

An IT Strategic Plan consists of:

• A list of business system developments identified from the objectives and goals of the company prioritised by scoring against their contribution to the key business drivers (strategic, revenue generation, cost saving, customer service and legal/fiscal)
• An outline architecture demonstrating how the different systems would be joined up, and provide flexibility for the future
• Commentary about technology trends that influence future strategy
• A schedule of business and infrastructure developments reflecting the priority (based on contribution to the business, estimated effort (and/or cost) needed to develop them and the effort needed to provide support, maintenance and operation of existing systems
• The IT organisation and resourcing required to achieve the plan
• Cost implications to go into the company budgeting process