There’s a saying that goes “A goal without a plan is a wish.”  With that in mind, do you have an IT Strategy? Is it aligned with your practice’s business plan?

The reason this is important is that it allows you to make better decisions and be more proactive with your IT investments.

An IT strategy asks three key things:

1) Where are we now?  

• What does your firm look like now?
• What does your IT look like now?
• What are the good points and bad points?

2) Where do we want to go?

• What will your firm’s needs be in the future, and
• What technology do we need to meet those needs?

3) How do we get there?  

• How do we change things to meet our needs?
• What risks do we need to navigate?
• How can we be assured of achieving or expected goals? 

This is the core of your IT plan

Bear in mind that the plan needs to be flexible, to ensure that the technology remains relevant in an evolving business.

Every IT investment answers one of more of our three drivers – capacity, capability or risk.  This is the Kinetics “holy trinity” of IT investment. To get value for money, any IT investment/project/change should address at least one of these things;

1. Increase capacity:  Faster, more processing, less expensively.
2. Increase capability:  Allowing you to do something new that you didn’t do before.   (e.g a website that allows online ordering  – this could be the thing that gives your business the competitive advantage over others.)
3. Reduce risk: make sure your critical equipment is covered under a warranty  or enhance your ability to deal with a disaster or failure – increasing redundancy, enhancing backups

If you are about to sign off on IT investment, ask yourself which of these are being addressed and are you getting bang for your buck?