Strategic planning for businesses, large or small, is a critical process to achieve its goals and be profitable. Proper strategic planning includes both short-term and long-term planning and should touch upon every aspect of the business including: production and sales, organization structure, employee development, fiscal planning. What some organizations may not realize is that their Information Technology (IT) must also become a strategic goal and a key part of this planning process.
Organizations need to understand how they currently use technology and how it can be used strategically to improve business processes, making them more efficient and less costly, potentially increasing market position.
So what is IT planning really? Much like traditional business planning it is the process of determining how your organization can best use your technology to further your mission. It involves assessing your existing resources, defining your needs, and exploring solutions.
1. What does Success Mean to Your Organization?
Use your strategic goals for the organization to create aligning IT goals. Create an IT ‘vision statement’ defining how and where technology can be put into place in order to help your organization fulfill its mission, enable or enhance your strategic plan, and improve organizational effectiveness.
Make sure there is universal agreement on this throughout the organization.
2. Assess Your Existing Resources
Define the current state of your organization’s technology by benchmarking where you are versus where you would like to be.
- Do you have a team, an individual, or no one monitoring it?
- Are things up to date?
- What is the current IT budget/investment?
- Is IT viewed as a ‘cost’ or as an ‘enabler’ of the business succeeding?
3. Define Your Needs
Identify business needs and priorities. This will be a large factor in what your IT solutions should include. These needs may include:
- New business changes or acquisitions
- Expected business growth
- Overall goals for the year
- Any policy changes
- Regulatory or compliance needs or changes
Once you know your business needs, you can begin to explore how to meet them.
4. Explore Solutions
Based on your business needs, what should your IT solutions include? What can the organization do in order to reach your goals and meet those defined needs?
- Purchasing new software or software updates
- Providing general or focused training for the staff
- Replacing or customizing a database
- Utilizing outside expertise
- Developing policies and procedures for using computers
- Implementing backup systems and other security measures
- Replacing obsolete hardware
- Assessing Managed Services as an IT solution
5. Create a Technology Plan
Use the knowledge gained from assessing your current IT situation, your business needs and potential solutions to craft a strategic IT plan.
- What are the benefits, tasks and costs of implementation
- Are there risks to address?
Create a timeline with long and short term goals. A long term plan puts the organization in a proactive state rather than a reactive one while short term goals allow for flexibility in the event of an unforeseen situation.
Draft a budget not only including items such as new equipment and software, but also think about time it will take to learn new software, perform backups, monthly updates (anti-virus), frequent security patches, and the potential for hiring experts to manage it all.
Monitor performance of this plan allowing for small changes to be made as necessary and include evaluation criteria so you know when something is working and when it’s not.
By taking the time to prepare an IT Plan and strategy, an organization can decrease spending and increase productivity if implemented correctly.
