Organizational IT planning, or strategic planning, is used by organizations to create the roadmap to reaching business goals. Modern businesses must embrace new approaches to organizational IT planning that can adapt to rapidly changing technologies while still keeping the long-term business goals in sight. According to Gartner’s 2017 CIO Survey, only 29% of IT leaders believe their organization is effective at IT strategy and planning, with only 23% believing their organization is effective with business planning in general. Since business planning and IT planning must go hand-in-hand, that leaves a large percentage of businesses that are failing to adequately plan for the needs of their business. Often, the internal IT department is ill-prepared for this type of planning and you may benefit from outsourcing the strategic planning for your organization while having your own IT department to carry out the completed plan.
IT planning involves business continuity planning to ensure the organization can remain in operation even when facing natural and man-made disasters. According to our 2017 U.S. IT Services Report, 14% of businesses are still operating without a clearly documented business continuity plan, and 3% are not even considering the development of such a plan.
An effective IT plan can set the company up to realize their business goals and outcomes, which makes this a necessary component of growing your business. According to Architecture and Governance Magazine, some Fortune 500 companies and government agencies have validated returns on investment as high as 700% as a result of their investment in IT strategic planning.
If your own team isn’t experienced in this area of IT strategy and planning, it makes sense to find a provider that is and outsource the process. Some benefits of outsourcing IT planning include:
Objectivity. Utilizing consultants to handle the creation of your IT plan ensures objectivity. Your own IT department may be too close to the needs and wants of the organization to accurately develop a plan that meets the overall goals of the company.
Conservation of internal resources. By outsourcing the planning process, your own IT department can remain focused on the day-to-day needs of the organization. Planning can take three to four months, depending on the size of your organization and scope of the project; if your IT team is focused on creating the plan, who will do their routine responsibilities?
Expertise. Not all IT departments are equipped to handle the creation of a comprehensive IT plan. By outsourcing to an experienced organization, you ensure you have the education, experience, and objectivity required to prepare a useful plan and help the required obtain buy-in from the organization’s stakeholders.
Organizational IT planning to develop, roll-out, maintain, and assure secure continuity of operations is critical for organizations of all sizes. Engaging the assistance of an IT service provider to outsource these business-critical plans to assure IT infrastructure resilience can be extremely helpful. The reasoning is simple. IT services providers bring an experienced and broad view of the challenges faced and solutions implemented across many organizations. Such knowledge and expertise, often not held by an organization’s in-house IT staff, is valuable for developing plans and avoiding pitfalls.
Fidelus Technologies, based out of New York City is a Professional and Managed Information Technology Services company focused on customer success and business efficiency . Our services provide seamless networking, data center, wireless, security and unified communications expertise for medium and enterprise sized businesses. We have a consultative life cycle approach that includes requirements gathering, assessments, solution design, planning, project management, engineering, adoption and evolution (training) services to fully support the IT needs of your organization.
If you’re looking for more information on how Fidelus can help with your organizations technology please contact us here. To access our in-depth analysis on how IT teams across the country are using IT services and products within their organization click below.
2017 U.S. IT Services Report sponsored by Fidelus
