The impact of not having a robust IT strategy
(and how to make one)
A good holiday only succeeds with travel goals and the right luggage. The same goes for planning for global software implementations. Yet organisations often lack a coherent overall strategy. The consequences of needing a comprehensive approach make businesses adrift, causing lost time and money.
A good start? Start with the end in mind and know your goals for the next three years if you want to get anywhere. Building a strategy is difficult. It often involves a change in the way organisations think and operate and requires solid change management. So, it is easier to stay with what has worked in the past. Moreover, targets often do not extend beyond the date of the next shareholder meeting.
Often, shareholder goals only lead to reducing costs to increase profits. But more is needed, especially when implementing software that impacts all aspects of your global business. The more competitive the industry and the fight for resources, the more critical it is to have a strategy. If you don’t have a plan, your business risks more and misses opportunities. That’s why it’s always recommended to work with a specialized partner to align your IT roadmap with your business strategy.
Risks
You need to protect your data and your client's data. But do you have a proper IT strategy to do so? Being hacked could mean you go out of business. Therefore, you need to have an integrated plan in which you secure hardware, software, and data, build a security-focused culture, and invest in cybersecurity. Only some organisations have the time and resources to do this: they are better served by a partner that manages all their cybersecurity challenges.
If you need a strategy for maintaining, upgrading, and updating your systems, you might face high costs and a severe support workload quickly. Outdated technology also negatively impacts customer experience, employability and operations. When unsupported technology fails, it can jeopardise your entire operation.
A good strategy helps you set priorities and uncovers what is not moving the needle for the business. This gets the most out of your investments. IT budgets are enormous; if you can save here, that budget can go back into other growth opportunities. Without the ability to connect your activities to specific business goals, it’s hard to make a case for resources.
As your business scales, it will need to grow and standardise the applications used internally. With a robust strategy, these solutions will have good UIs & UX's, preventing many issues downstream like wasted time, the need to re-evaluate the software solution, the need to re-build processes and lack of adoption.
You can measure success with concrete, quantifiable, measurable goals to demonstrate results, value and performance. Examples of clear goals:
Without measuring success, you won’t be able to adjust your strategy or improve your business. Measuring means there are more opportunities for finetuning within your reach.
Automation and AI
If you are not looking for potential improvements and consider your business holistically, you will miss innovative opportunities for automation that can drastically improve efficiency and effectiveness. Although 83% of executives say they have some automation, you must stay ahead of the competition. The same goes for AI. However, AI is a process, and you need robust internal systems and accurate data to create AI models that will add value to your organisation.
Do you still use a landline? It might do the trick if your business is 100% static. However, if your organisation needs the most secure and effective IT systems to be agile and competitive, it would be best if you had a thriving ecosystem of easy-to-integrate and easy-to-use applications. And you need to be able to operate anywhere in the world at any time. It is for that reason that companies use smartphones. They are more competitive with dynamic technology, especially if a giant company is behind the constantly improving technology.
