Strategy squared

It’s somewhat surprising these days in the world where business planning strategy has become such an important facet of everyday business life that IT tends to get such a raw deal when it comes to planning. While Information Systems (or IS) strategy is nothing new - many organizations claim to have a IS strategy, whilst failing to ensure that it is aligned with the overall business strategy.

A common failure is that typically such strategies require ownership and initiation by the senior board, however,often the production of the IS strategy becomes sidelined and fails to link in with overall business targets and critical success factors with the production of the strategy being delegated to a suitable departmental manager.

A successful IS strategy is not one that is simply documented - but one that describes deliverables and manages risk whilst delivering benefit to the organization. This usually requires a holistic view of an organization that simply can’t be achieved from a departmental level.

When it comes to contents, there is no cast iron rule as to what constitutes an Information systems strategy, however there are a number of areas that are usually considered - these include:

Business plan drivers
What elements of the Business Strategy require support from the IT Strategy. How does the IS strategy ensure compliance with the business strategy.

Scope/Targets
Often IS strategies become intrinsically linked with improvement projects - these may be to improve efficiency, competitiveness, customer satisfaction for example - the strategy document should clearly outline the scope that the deliverables/targets will cover.

Governance
IS Strategies usually define a set of rules that the business will operate within, what KPI’s and CSF (Critical success factors) are important to satisfactory delivery.

Technology
Setting the standard and type of technology that will be used in the enterprise - this often forms a rationalization project to consolidate certain activity onto a standard technology toolset (e.g. database type).

People
The strategy will also often cover people management including standards and development, training, succession planning

Costs
The strategy will endeavor to set a cost for the delivery of the targets - this may often be in the form of a business case or cost justification.

IS strategies usually requires a mandate - this usually necessitates sign off and ownership by a suitable accountable executive (perhaps a CIO). The strategy should be reviewed and monitored routinely to report against deliverables and ensure that the strategy is still suitable.

There are also typically a number of challenges associated with the development of an IS strategy these are:

How to define and measure tangible benefits
Lack of understanding of senior executives
Political conflicts within an organization
Existing IT investment which may not meet requirements.
High costs
Internal Resistance to change