How are you evaluating your IT strategy?
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My evaluations are based on below points
-> Identifying Goals, Adaptability, Iterative
Understandable : Clarity helps managers to realize where to lead their subordinates.
Cost-effective : Strategic planning is impossible without considering the financial side.
Future-oriented : supporting daily operations and developing for the future
We evaluate based on how well it is supporting the current business model and future growth model, utilizing people, process, and technology.
Our IT Strategy is measured against delivery towards the Business strategy. We did a COBIT review with the business leadership 2 years back and that gave us many areas to focus on and then this year we did a 360 with the business leadership again. Each Executive up to the CEO was given some time with the IT Management team to unpack their frustrations with I.T. as well as their vision for how I.T. can assist them deliver the business strategy objectives and initiatives.
From there we were able to evaluate what need to change. Now all we have to do is execute!
For us, the main thing in the evaluation of IT strategy is how every aspect of the business from order processing to marketing can be streamlined and improved via efficiency savings. With global economic impacts, money-saving and efficiencies are key to business survival. If we can operate with less duplication, manual processing and manual intervention the better.
By connecting various sections of the business using modern application methods we are able to improve efficiency. For example, we are utilising open API's from the various providers that we use to automate processes between systems thus reducing the manual input of staff. This also includes the adoption of new software that integrates with our existing platforms making for much speedier implementation and testing stages, together with easy user adoption of the new systems.
We evaluate each system, application or provider by assessing how it will improve efficiency. The timescale of implementation and the overall impact on the day-to-day operation of the business. If it meets most of these requirements then it is deemed viable to put into a test and evaluate stage where it is normally run in parallel with existing systems until we conclude it is the right choice.
We use Enterprise Architecture tools to link our business model and strategic goals to enterprise business capabilities. We survey user groups periodically to score the value, performance and maturity of our capabilities. By linking to business model and strategic goals, we can see which capabilities need to be improved in order to deliver the most value to the company. We can also see where to divest or eliminate capabilities as the model changes or strategy changes. Our ultimate score card shows success when the performance and maturity for a capability improves to the level we expect or greater in order to unlock the most value. We focus where the highest value to the firm is.