IT Strategy Archives

Your IT strategy will differ from just about every other company – it will be completely unique to you. So if you’ve ever wondered how to craft a strategic IT plan or if you’re looking for a refresher on the subject, look no further.

We’ve identified four critical steps that can help you create the perfect actionable IT strategy that aligns your business goals with your technology.

1. Set short-term and long-term business goals

You must prioritize your IT in the context of the operations and strategy of your business. Though IT is still paramount to your business success, it’s imperative to realize the key truth:

Every aspect of your IT must strategically empower your business.

Having technology for technology’s sake isn’t inherently useful and often results in unnecessary confusion and complication within your business.

By developing actionable goals for your business, you begin to form a roadmap that clarifies your path. This path will likely be very different than the course you’ll take 5 years from now.

Establishing these strategic paths for your business will help determine the general direction to take your technology.

For example, if you plan to grow your business to include more eCommerce transactions, you’ll want to start considering security compliance regulations, server storage, and cloud-based backup options.

2. Examine your current IT infrastructure

According to Gartner CIO Agenda, IT leaders expect a 2.0% increase, on average, in the IT budget for 2021. After determining your IT budget and conceptualizing your business path, you can start to look at the current state of your IT infrastructure. Take stock of all your organization’s devices and software and figure out how they’re currently being utilized.

Even a cursory overview of your technology can tell you where you need to focus your efforts on optimizing and then aligning for growth and change. For example, your office productivity may suffer due to malfunctioning and outdated workstations.

Even though you can’t do anything at this very moment, you’ve gained valuable insight into how and where to allocate your resources. That’s the perfect starting point for an effective IT strategy.

3. Determine bottlenecks and implement solutions

After you’ve taken thorough stock of your inventory and infrastructure, you can begin to analyze and implement solutions. You can start by examining your business areas that need additional resources to complete their tasks more effectively.

Also, you can look for wasted resources. Take program licenses as an example – some users in your office may not need licensing for specialized programs. However, it’s easy to lose track of these licenses over time. Removing those you don’t use can put money back into your company that would be better suited for other areas.

You can also more easily identify operational bottlenecks caused by IT. The right technology can eradicate these bottlenecks, giving you back time, resources, and productivity.

4. Assess and analyze new IT solutions for effectiveness

Completing the initial implementation of your IT strategy doesn’t mean you should stop improving it. As you address all your bottlenecks and create implementation plans for necessary solutions, you must shift to an analytical phase.

The best progress in your business improvement is made during this phase. You can drill down into actual results and make tweaks as necessary. That may mean adjusting levels of devices and programs or even changing internal IT processes to fit your organization’s real-world needs.

Crafting a purposeful IT strategy

Using these four steps will put you on a path to creating the right strategy for your organization. To get the most out of it, you’ll need to seamlessly integrate the strategy with other facets of your IT.

One of the biggest buzzwords in the business world is continuity. But if that means that business continuity is on your radar, that’s a good thing.

Unfortunately, buzzwords (or phrases) are a double-edged sword. They become so common that you start to ignore them. Ignoring business continuity will be to your detriment.

So, let’s spend a few minutes exploring business continuity, how it’s different from disaster recovery, what could happen if you don’t have a continuity plan, and six essential things your plan should contain.

Business continuity vs. disaster recovery

At first glance, it can seem like business continuity and disaster recovery are the same thing. However, disaster recovery is a part of business continuity. As it’s only a part, you need a complete business continuity plan that moves beyond just disaster recovery.

Disaster recovery is mostly concerned with backing up your data. The thinking is simple enough. When disaster strikes, the negative impact on your business will be far greater if you lose all your critical data. So, disaster recovery plans give you a way to protect that data by making sure there’s a backup copy.

Business continuity, on the other hand, aims to address all the ways your business will be affected in the wake of a disaster. In addition to data backup, it includes factors such as maintaining communication, ensuring critical business processes stay online, continuing to provide your employees with the tools they need to do their jobs, and enabling your customers to contact you as needed.

You need both kinds of plans.

“An effective business continuity plan lays out the instructions and procedures an organization must undergo when some kind of disaster occurs.”
– TechRepublic

What if you don’t have a business continuity plan?

Instead of looking at all the bad things that may happen, reflect on all the good things you’ll miss out on. For example, work won’t be completed, revenue-generating activities will stop, and your ability to communicate internally and externally will come to a grinding halt. You’ll start to lose ground at the moment of disaster and you won’t regain any ground until you identify a way to get things up and running again.

Unfortunately, getting things up and running again or securing business continuity is tough without a plan. As a result of all these consequences, your reputation will take a considerable hit. Even worse, if your competitors appear prepared and you don’t, you may lose business to them.

The 6 essential elements of business continuity

If you’re ready to start building out your own business continuity plan, the best option is to contact your managed IT services provider. They’re already familiar with your business and will be ideally situated to help you put together a solid BC plan.

But if you’re planning to take a DIY approach, here are the things your plan should include.

1. A literal, written plan

This may seem obvious, but not everyone thinks about it. Your business continuity plan should be written down. If you lack thorough documentation, you don’t have a complete business continuity plan.

2. Arrangements for addressing critical operations

Some processes are more critical than others. You need to decide what the most critical operations are for your company and then build out plans for maintaining or restoring them in the event of a disaster.

3. Clear documentation of who’s responsible for what

It’s not enough to have a plan for maintaining and restoring critical processes. You also need to know who is responsible for each part of each plan. Making sure these details are crystal clear reduces the risk of everything falling apart in the event of an emergency.

4. An emergency communications strategy

What will you do if all the cell phone towers are down? How will your team stay in contact with each other? You need to think about communications strategies that address worst-case scenarios.

5. Off-site backup

Data backup is important. But to really protect your data, you need to do more than back it up. You need to back it up off-site. Doing so ensures that even if your office is literally destroyed, your data will remain intact.

“Putting in the advance groundwork during quieter times not only leads to cooler heads during more turbulent times, but will also make a tremendous difference to your customers, employees and future business performance.”
-CIO

6. An alternate work location

Finally, you need a plan for moving business operations to another location in the event that your office can’t be used. When this happens, can your staff do everything remotely? Is there another office in a neighboring city that could handle things for a while? Be prepared for this possibility so your business operations flow smoothly.

Making business continuity happen

Business continuity is always going to feel like something you’ll have time to do later. The problem is, if you don’t already have a plan before you need it, you may find yourself in hot water.

We strongly recommend that you put a business continuity plan together, now. Trust us—if the day comes that you need it, you’ll be glad you did.

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4 steps to creating an effective IT strategy