IT Strategy

There are few businesses today that are not supported by some sort of information technology. Having an effective IT strategy aligned to the business imperatives is essential for success.

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A modern high performance IT organiusation is founded on some key elements:

• Effective innovation processes, with strong pipeline and change management
• Agile, responsive & productive development
• Efficient operations, well geared to meet the changing needs of the business
• Well managed technology operating costs

Building the supporting IT strategy entails three steps:

• Defining the future state
• Laying out the business and technology roadmap
• Justifying the necessary investments

Once these early steps have been completed, defining the necessary programme of work to create the supporting systems and processes focuses on, for example, looking for ways to simply business operations and move them to online, straight-through processing; reviewing legacy systems (e.g., for integration and replacement); defining, or refining, application architecture; prioritising investments amongst a total desired portfolio; planning migration.

Also, to ensure that both a programme of change itself, and the ongoing systems, are efficient (e.g., in terms of cost), IT strategy should also consider, and implement work in areas such as, defining cost management approaches; maximising sourcing & outsourcing opportunities; demystifying IT Charges to the businesses (to orient incentives to keep costs down); managing IT and project risk; managing organisational performance. In an existing standing organisation, these latter areas can also be a focus of a stand-alone cost and performance improvement programme.

Sixhills has a broad range of experience applicable in IT Strategy and can help you to build and realise your vision.