The Importance of IT Planning

There is never a good excuse for IT management not having a formally documented IT Plan or Strategic Roadmap. We often find that organizations operating without an appropriate IT plan are unable to engage in sufficient levels of proactive management. Instead they take on a fire fighting mentality which leads to increased levels of risk, operating inefficiencies and ultimately poor outcomes for the business.

Symptoms of poor, or absent, IT planning include:

  • Reactionary rather than preventative attitude towards problem fixing
  • Ongoing infrastructure capacity constraints
  • Inefficient use of capital and operational funds
  • Poorly aligned IT policies that impact the efficiency of the business (such as mailbox size limits)
  • Inability to deliver on business requirements in a timely manner
  • The “resource crunch” – no time to do the job properly
  • No capacity to provide evidence that supports critical budget or project requests
  • Defensive attitude of IT help desk staff
  • Business units making technology decisions without the involvement of IT
  • Loss of executive management “faith” in IT service delivery

A good quality IT plan will help management to find the right balance between business usual activities and the planned projects that deliver enhancements to services and capabilities. It can also be used as a tool to unlock funding from the business that enables key IT initiatives that would otherwise remain underfunded and undeployable.

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How Can Beyond Technology Help?

We specialise in aligning business requirements to technology solutions and creating realistic IT plans is a core part of this process. All of our engagements are unique as we tailor each project to clients exacting needs. We can help organisations across the three key areas of IT Planning:

Develop

It is not uncommon for immature IT organisations to manage day to day operations without a formal IT Plan being in place and without obviously impacting on service delivery to the business. However, in reality these organisations are living with unacceptable risks of infrastructure that is inappropriate for purpose. Their ability to react and refocus is significantly limited and without resource planning, justification for additional investment can only be based on pleas and fear.

Enhance

Business requirements are always changing and when this is coupled with the fast pace of technology development, the goal of making the right technology infrastructure choices can be huge challenge. We can help you to plan out when enhanced infrastructure capabilities are required, and understand the implications, both financial and operational, of deploying them. This will therefore ensure that IT service delivery will grow to meet the changing needs of the business without the risk of service level failure.

Align

If IT Plans are not aligned to the business it is highly likely that the organisation will be facing the increased costs and risks associated with a poorly optimised IT entity. We can assist you to uncover the expected and future demand from the business to enable the IT strategy to be aligned for more efficient delivery. The emphasis here is to ensure appropriate IT decisions are made that are in the best interests of the organisation as a whole.

Our experience as business focused technology experts places us in a unique position to be able to deliver to you the key insights required in the IT Planning process. Our consultants have helped a number of organisations with their IT Planning and if you would like to know more about how we could help your organisation please contact us.