How to Shape an IT Strategic Plan
Leading companies recognize that their IT systems are critical to achieving their strategic goals and meeting their strategic challenges.
Why 5 Years?
Our Role as Strategic Planning Partners
Our experience as strategic planning partners to leading SAP and non-SAP customers shows that to truly build out a robust IT infrastructure, it typically takes 5 years for a company to develop viable strategic plans.
From Mission Statement to Business Strategy
Strategic planning cycles typically take longer than shorter term, tactical plans. The translation of overall company business strategy into strategic objectives can also take longer than short term tactical planning typically entails.
Everybody Faces Tough Business Challenges - Regardless of Industry
Projects may run only for 6 months, but even the fastest growing SaaS companies take at least five years to fully ramp up, so a company in any other industry, such as Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO), Finance, Healthcare, or any other, especially if it has an established legacy environment, will require a solid IT strategy to achieve the following:
One of Our Strategic IT Roadmap Development Tools
- Have a ‘Core System(s)’ with 100% organizational confidence especially among the senior leadership team
- Templated and measurable business process
- Have a Corporate Data Dictionary
- Multi-phase rollout plan for all sites
- Budget aligned with business expectations
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Long-Term Strategic Goals
With these goals in mind, you can develop a 5 year strategy that will provide your strategic management team with a global view of all IT operations from a single top level view. The CIO's strategic business plan should always include a 5 year strategic IT plan that helps meet strategic planning objectives. Many IT plans, especially those involved in the Balanced Scorecard strategy management process, involve SAP in strategic planning, as they provide the SAP SSM (SAP Strategy Management) Tool, of which we are practitioners.
Technology Enabled Competitive Differentiator
The competitive advantages of having a 5 Year IT Roadmap are enormous. It will allow you to differentiate yourself from your competitors. Because of the sheer enormity and complexity of today's Information Technology landscape, having a strategic IT plan helps you make strategy choices using well established strategic planning process steps.
Strategy Decision Making
All of your strategic planning activities should be aimed at making strategy decision-making processes objective based, measurable, and transparent. When it comes to developing your 5 year IT roadmap, the strategic decisions you make will also directly affect the budgetary process.
IT Strategy in a Highly Competitive Environment
One of the key reasons for a planning your IT strategy out through five years is that it gives you an opportunity to develop IT systems that give you an insurmountable competitive edge. It also forces you evaluate your company mission and make strategic choices about which IT systems you will and will not acquire to support your organization's mission.
Strategic Vision to Action Plan
Converting your strategic vision into achievable operational goals and step-by-step action plans is key to achieving your long term strategic vision.
Long Term Goals vs Short Term Goals
One of the keys to successful long term IT strategic planning is to create and align your action plans with both long and short term goals. That's why developing a detailed IT roadmap is so critical to success. Your choice is not which of two roads to take, it is often, which of several dozen or even hundreds of possible solution choices to make. We can help you make you that choice using not just a proprietary strategic methodology but based on years of experience across a wide number and types of enterprises.
Organizational Goals - Rigidly Flexible
While a company's business goals should be formulated by translating your company's strategy in organizational goals, new opportunities may arise that mean you have make mid-course adjustments. That's one of the key reasons you need a solid, yet highly dynamic 5 year IT strategic plan - so you can respond to new market opportunities or competitive threats.
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