According to research firm Gartner, less than 30% of the CIOs believe that their I&T (information & technology) strategic planning is effective in delivering business objectives.
Digital CIOs need a strategic I&T plan to help their organizations leap forward on the digital technology front.
Building a strategic road map is a challenge for the C-level executives. Ed Gabrys, research director at Gartner said that a strategic IT roadmap is like a phone’s GPS, that shows direction for travel, but the routes taken to reach that destination can change en route.
CIOs must identify the direction that addresses their organization’s current as well as future ambitions, and create an I&T strategy that supports the overall strategy of the organization.
Also read: Global public cloud services market to total $206.2 billion by 2019: Gartner
He proposes two key steps in developing an I&T strategy for an organization:
- Identifying the digital ambition of your organization
CIOs must identify the digital ambition of their organization. This can be achieved by working closely with the business leaders and trying to get answers to what digital means for them. Based on the results, they need to align the existing IT resources to achieve the desired I&T change.
Investment tend to play an important role in the development of an organization’s I&T strategy roadmap.
- Determining the investment plans
Once CIOs identify the business strategy required for their organization’s digital growth, they need to align resources or investments to achieve this digital goal.
“The I&T roadmap is not about sorting project lists. The I&T roadmap is about investments,” said Gabrys.
He also proposed three investment portfolios:
- Transformation portfolios: This include the design and developments of ideas that help generate deeper customer insights and earn new revenue streams.
- Optimization portfolios: This can be an improvement or optimization of the existing business models and operations related to current products or services and customer experiences.
- Enablement portfolios: This include preserving the core business operations by making small adjustments to the current business processes.
Gabrys further suggested that before selecting any portfolio, CIOs must find out whether the industry in which they operate is going through a disruptive stage or not. If it’s in disruptive phase, then they should go for a transformative approach.
