Independent IT Advice

Benchmarking and IT Strategy

But what is an IT Strategy?

We'll start by telling you what it isn't!  It's nothing (or very little) to do with computers.

An IT strategy concerns itself with commercial considerations such as profit and loss, balance sheets, cash flow, sales revenue, customer churn, etc.  These are the key drivers within any business, and your IT strategy is the process by which you will use technology to support and improve your key financial indicators.

Likely considerations when developing such a strategy include:

• An evaluation of the financial position of the business, the business plan (to-be position), context and constraints.
• Evaluation of entire existing (as-is) IT infrastructure - hardware, software, people, suppliers, etc
• SWOT analysis of the wider organisation - Internal Strengths and Weaknesses against external factors
• Gap analysis - what is expected of the IT systems?
• Benchmarking - what can we learn from others in similar situations?

Key questions we would look to address will include:

• Do you build your business around your software, or visa versa?
• Do you develop in-house or buy and customise?  Is there a product to buy?
• What skills do you retain, what do you release?
• Do you need to outsource, or bring more skills in-house to manage risk?
• How will your need for certain skills change in 6, 12, 24 and 48 months?

Develop, or buy...

The choice between building your software around your business model vs your business model around your software has long been one of the most critical questions to answer.  Many organisations in the late nineties were desperately trying to become software houses - in the belief that they knew more about their industry than anyone else, and could successfully (a) develop and (b) market a great product.  Even in the unlikely event of (a) happening, (b) never did!

On the other hand, those companies that stuck steadfast to their software as the foundation to their business model have often found it more difficult to differentiate themselves to their customers, particularly when they had chosen the wrong software to begin with!

We help our clients understand the factors and constraints inherent in both of these approaches, helping them to build a strategy that usually sits somewhere between these two extremes - resulting in more flexible yet cost competitive IT systems that support differentiation or diversification - even in saturated or price-sensitive markets such as recruitment and financial services.