Planning Your IT Strategy for 2013

There’s still four months left in the year but for companies, especially for the big ones, it’s time to start planning for next year. The IT strategy would need special attention for next year because of the rapid and technological leaps in the cloud in the last couple of years. The most important aspects of this practice is deciding on which investment is the most appealing, especially if limited by budgetary constraints.

A new Harvard Business Review article estimated that the distribution is 70 percent for core business, 20 percent for adjacencies, and 10 transformational initiatives. The ROI, on the other hand, goes the other way around. This means 70 percent will come from transformational while 10 percent will come from the core. .

In the context of IT Investments, another important question is how do companies use technologies to directly increase their revenues. Technologies like cloud, social networks, and mobility are all famously used to  make processes more efficient but no study has directly correlated these technologies to increase in company profit. It is why companies should start planning their IT strategy early.

Here are five aspects of IT that should be considered.

Find New Technologies That Will Actually Cut Production/Process Costs

These days, a lot of mission critical applications will benefit from modernization, including new techniques such as cloud, mobile, and social enhancements. Additionally, modernization is usually lower cost and lower risk than complete replacements.

Target Ideas That My Change Actual Processes For The Better

While disruptive technologies are usually just means to an end, they have the potential to open new possibilities.

Go For Technologies That May Cut Down Expenses In The Short and Long Term

There is a potential to optimize IT spending by migrating app development and testing to the cloud, or using public social networks for collaboration among employees.

Go For Technologies That Can Work With Each Other

A great example of this is migrating to the cloud and incorporating social or mobile enhancements, which in tandem can improve internal IT agility and cost-effectiveness at the same time.

Think Long Term

It is always wise to target mix of investments that can provide both long term and short term returns, which will allow you to maintain a balance in your tactical projects between strategies that can be implemented rapidly and those that are slow to deploy, but provide bigger and more consistent returns.

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