In this era of economic fragility
and ferocious competition, often IT takes the biggest hit when companies attempt
to curb the costs. It wont be wrong to say that it is a totally foregone debate
how important is IT for the success of any company. Despite the adverse
economic ambience, IT remains fastest growing outlays for most of the
companies.
Mostly companies fail to
understand the business needs and thus end up wasting resources on
services/projects which do not meet the business requirements. The scrimmage
over the allocation of resources leaves IT and its business clients (which may be
different department within the same company or altogether external clients) in
delirium. Companies invest a lot of time, money and resources on IT projects
which are actually irrelevant or not of much relevance for the business needs. IT
strategy within any company cannot exist in isolation. In order to attain
strategic alignment, it becomes paramount to list down lucidly the business
objectives/goals through IT-business coordination and collaboration. Each of
the ongoing and upcoming IT projects needs to be evaluated under the microscope
for its relevance to business, cost of project, resources and time required and
of course the risks involved. Based on the parameters such as regulatory
necessities, business criticality, etc., all the projects should be segregated
into “must do”, “good to have” and “can be postponed” categories.
For any company, the key
questions to be asked are – is there a clear IT strategy for the firm? Does it
align with the business goal/strategy? Whether IT services for the company is
captive or outsourced, the organisations must check the IT spending because
many companies get IT driven or are struck with IT wave. Many companies often
find their IT expenditure skyrocketing and the stiff challenge they face is to
curb the IT expenditure. In doing so, they generally cut the expenditure
haphazardly, curbing many critical IT projects hurting the business. This calls
for robust tracking tools to monitor IT usage, making IT expenditure more
transparent. It is also required that companies periodically relook their IT
and find whether they are using technologies/software which are outdated as
they do for their operatives in other departments. As we might have witnessed,
legacy systems continue to exist in many big organisations e.g. many banks
still maintain their databases in mainframes. On one hand mainframes are
supposed to be most secure, on other their maintenance costs are very high
which is why organisations are migrating possible applications from legacy
systems to open systems or rather new platforms which offers safe, secure environment–
having low maintenance costs. The organisations should regularly perform IT security
and risk assessment. This leads to the complexity of maintenance, migration and
upgrade of company’s initial base of IT assets. Streamlining the entire system,
considerably, simplifies the businesses’ underlying IT need.
The role of IT is to enable the
business by ensuring that there is a strong and clear relationship between IT
investment decisions and the organization’s overall strategies, goals, and
objectives. To achieve this, organisations must ensure that IT funding and
solutions align with business strategies; they must organize IT's financial,
technical, and human resources around business value; and they must provide
oversight of IT-related activities to manage IT-related risks. Conclusively, in
my opinion a company’s IT strategy can be successful if it is able to answer
following key questions (which they, often, dont):
- Is there a clear IT strategy aligned with the business strategy, goal and objectives?
- Where is business, voraciously, consuming IT costs and what is driving these costs?
- Is it easy and efficient (including cost-effective) to implement IT changes or new IT infrastructure?
- Are there clear procedures/tools to monitor IT expenditure and are they enforced?
