There are many challenges that organisations face when implementing a successful strategic IT plan. These largely stem from the mystery that is “Information Technology” and the lack of experience building such plans in the past. This blog will outline these challenges and present ways in which organisations may overcome them.
You're a business person, not an IT person
Organisations are typically not made up of IT people. Senior management such as the CEO are first and foremost business people; they understand business strategy and objectives, but the world of IT is often a mystery. Topics ranging from databases to networking, from business intelligence to infrastructure can be overwhelming, especially when they don’t immediately appear to have a direct influence on the organisation’s objectives.
Using senior managers to create the high level critical success factors for strategic IT planning is very effective, however often they need assistance with defining the more detailed elements of a complete IT strategy. Senior managers often struggle with the risk management elements of a strategic plan as they may lack a comprehensive understanding of all the technical elements of IT environments.
Internal Bias
There may be issues when implementing a strategic IT plan internally, as bias can come into play. An example of this would be where someone has been given the task of implementing a strategic IT plan for the organisation. Because each person has only ever worked in a handful of different environments, the strategic objectives and technology drivers can often be biased around their personal experience.
This happened with one of our not for profit clients in Victoria, where they developed a strategic objective to use the CRM product Salesforce to manage their constituents. While this is a great product, the recommendation was biased due to the experience the CFO had in a previous role. Subsequently, the implementation was hugely costly and did not deliver on the underlying core objectives - they ultimately needed an ERP instead of a CRM and had challenges with the SaaS (Software as a service) model. As every organisation has a unique set of requirements, it is crucial to understand the needs of each individual organisation and base the strategic IT plan on these specific needs.
Required Expertise to Cover the Broad Range of IT
As we touched on briefly before, the world of IT is vast and without the right knowledge, very confusing. Elements of IT extend from hardware and infrastructure to software platforms as well as phones, networking, business intelligence, databases, spreadsheets and even programming. All of this requires many professionals with an expertise in each specific field, so trying to create a cohesive strategy to tackle the varied field of IT internally can be difficult. Consulting firms such as R & G have a large number IT professionals with field experience in implementing effective IT strategy in order to ensure that your organisation’s goals can be reached in the most timely and financially efficient way possible.
Helping Stakeholders to Understand the Value of IT
Another challenge that organisations must overcome when implementing a strategic IT plan is figuring out how to help stakeholders (who typically don’t have much IT knowledge) to understand the value that formal and comprehensive strategic IT planning will deliver to the organisation.
A lot of the time, issues arise from a lack of understanding of the return on investment in IT planning. Often it seems that a strategic IT plan is not necessary for the goals of your organisation, but that is far from the case. The effective use of Information Technology can bring any organisation positive tangible and intangible benefits that need to be articulated in a way that makes sense to stakeholders. Whether this is through TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) analysis or ROI (Return on Investment) calculators stakeholders must understand the true value of developing a documented strategic IT plan, and formalised strategic IT planning processes.
Related: The True Cost of IT: Owned vs Cloud
Overcome these challenges by using a trusted IT partner
We have seen how a comprehensive, successfully implemented IT strategy will bring real benefits to an organisation including increased productivity, reduced risk and a real competitive advantage in the market. By implementing a strategic IT plan, your organisation will be in the best condition to reach its targeted goals and continue to grow.
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