Embracing the change by determining the new business opportunities is critical in today’s continuously evolving digital space to sustain. But, the more important thing is, doing it at the right time. With my research and a few discussions with our IT Experts, I have been able to prepare a list of 5 signs when you should reconsider your IT Strategic Plan.
Before we explore the signs, let’s understand what the Information Technology Strategic Plan is all about & why developing a plan that adapts to the changes is vital?
IT strategic plan is a detailed document that works as a business-aligned IT roadmap for companies and enables them to have a clear and strategic direction to move forward with the right technology preferences.
Fostering IT-related decision-making, this plan identifies the IT scopes for businesses to deliver more value to customers and outperform their competitors by making the most of technology.
A strategic plan is not a static document instead, It is an ongoing organizational process backed by data. According to the Harvard Business School, In their online course of Disruptive Strategy, they ran a survey on the graduated students of HBS who were all startups and found 93 percent of successful strategies were evolved and pivoted away from their original forms.
While enabling us to be prepared for unexpected changes, an IT strategic plan can help us determine prominent emergencies and respond to them in a planned way.
For example, on the last working day of the week when you are working on some important documents or files but the file server suddenly is not letting you do so and you find out that due to the heavy workload this week, your system is really low on storage space. What would you do now?
The task you are working on is really important and needs to be submitted by day end. Well, fortunately, your company follows a tendency to keep updating their IT strategic plan on a timely basis and sensing the data overloading issues, they have already implemented a pilot project for cloud migration. Now think about the consequence, If you didn’t have an in-place IT strategic plan.
Hence, an IT plan is successful when considered as an iterative and dynamic process that includes both current and future business objectives while bringing agility to quickly respond to the market shifts.
Getting back to the central objective of the article – The 5 Signs You Should Update Your IT Strategic Plan:
Recently Updated Your System
Nowadays, every now and then a new technology trend is emerging in the market and generating a buzz across industries hence, businesses need to update their software applications or features accordingly to gain a competitive advantage.
You need to make sure that as you update your system or even a small functionality of your application, you get it nicely integrated into your core architecture by updating your IT strategic plan.
Made Changes in Your Business Strategy
Business and IT are inextricably linked and go hand in hand. Without having the right technologies in place a business plan can’t serve successful and effective operations. Lacking IT strategic planning might even lead you to make costly development mistakes by selecting the wrong technology choices.
Hence, to have an effective and successful execution of your business strategy don’t forget to prioritize a clear and strategic direction for technology priorities.
You’re Falling Short of Your KPIs
Key performance indicator (KPI) refers to a performance measurement term that evaluates the effectiveness of a company’s resources and activities like projects, tasks, software, etc towards achieving the main business objectives. Likewise, success relies upon the repeated accomplishments of an organization’s operational goals and ensuring progress toward the strategic business goals, selecting and creating the right KPIs truly depends on having an accurate understanding of the important areas of the organization.
If anytime you feel that your organization is falling short of its KPIs, you need to make sure that you give your strategic plan a deep diagnosis and align your KPIs with the updated business goals. Businesses mostly create KPIs to measure their overall performance, however, they fail to update those KPIs with the evolving product management metrics.
Businesses need to understand change is critical while adapting to the rapidly changing requirements to keep up with today’s fast-paced digital competition. The standard way to embrace changes effectively is developing goals and binding together operations with strategic planning or decision-making.
It’s Been a While Since You Have Not Updated
Industries across the globe are growingly leaning on the latest technologies to foster their operational efficiency and resource productivity, in such a competitive world if you are not updating your software application on a timely basis, you are likely putting your business at risk of losing its brand value. Hence, stop assuming that everything is fine and will continue to work smoothly and update your IT strategy now because you never know at what moment an issue will creep into your system.
Facing Data Accuracy Challenges
Data enables efficiency in the business processes but unfortunately, databases are often overlooked resulting in inevitably arising data management challenges like Storing and utilizing large data, system crashes, etc.
Checking your database’s health regularly and constantly improving upon the technology to manage it while updating the same in your IT strategic planning will help businesses have a great impact on their decision-making.
Conclusion
An IT plan is often overlooked and doesn’t get the strategic focus it deserves on a timely basis. As having an effective business development strategy is critical for business sustainability, updating it with strategic approaches is also crucial to ensure the long-term success of the business.
When it gets updated at the right time, an IT strategic plan plays a significant role in shaping the future of any business hence, It is important that you keep yourself prepared to pivot your IT plan as per the growing consumer and market trends.
