Merriam-Webster defines strategy as:
- a careful plan or method for achieving a particular goal usually over a long period of time
- the skill of making or carrying out plans to achieve a goal
Businesses are altering and modernizing how they are using technology to drive profitable growth and client success, unfortunately far too many businesses build their technology strategies by aligning with the tactics of their business operations (starting with the ‘what we need to do’) rather than aligning with the organization’s strategic goals (starting with the ‘why we need to do it’).
TACTICS VS STRATEGY
As the Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu wrote over 2,500 years ago in ‘The Art of War’, “Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.”
Although starting tactically is a quick way to show immediate progress, inappropriate priority decisions can lead to costly rework and end-user disruption. One example of this we see with our clients is in their deployment of Microsoft Teams.
When the COVID-19 outbreak began, companies around the world rapidly deployed Teams to support remote and hybrid working staff. An unfortunate casualty of these frantic deployments was Teams governance. IT leaders didn’t have time to take an assessment of Teams to determine the proper security, compliance and governance controls necessary to protect their business. Now, as they look to implement Teams governance settings retrospectively, such as a naming convention policy, an expiration policy, restricting access to add external guests, or limit who can create a Team, they will potentially disrupt user productivity. Having a tactical plan is important, however the tactical plan should not be defined until the strategic plan has been determined.
STRATEGY PLANNING
In ‘Strategic Planning for Public and Nonprofit Organizations’, John M. Bryson defines strategic planning as “a disciplined effort to produce fundamental decisions and actions which shape and guide what an organisation is, what it does and why it does it – all with a focus on the future.”
A strategic plan offers some of the following benefits:
- Describes the organisation’s goals
- Identifies the actions needed to achieve the goals
- Identifies problems or pain points to address
- Establishes priorities for implementation
- Helps formalize the desired direction and determines how resources will be allocated in pursuit of this direction
- Communicates the solution plans across both business and IT stakeholders
Here at Insentra, we aid businesses who would like to develop a strategic plan which links their organisation’s business goals with relevant product and technology decisions. By focusing on the ‘why’, we can help evaluate problems and solve for them using quantified business solutions. Leveraging our experience and advisory methodology, we deliver a powerful, insight-driven, one-page strategic plan, giving clients an actionable roadmap to success. The ability to deliver outcomes which demonstrate actual time to value should not be underestimated. Our experience shows there are many clients paying for entitlements and capabilities which are not being leveraged in the Microsoft 365 space. Aligning strategic outcomes with measurable returns is core to our methodology.
A great follow-up blog to read is this series on our methodology, by Global Head of Advisory, Lee Foster.
ENTER ADVISORY SERVICES
Much of the advisory engagement consists of discovery workshops with the senior leadership, technical and business representatives, subject matter experts, other stakeholders and appropriate Partners or vendors. The objectives of the workshops are to:
- Gain an understanding of the current state of technology capabilities (where are you now, what are your pain points)
- Gain an understanding of the business priorities (who is doing what, when and for how long)
- Highlight next steps and define success criteria (what do you need to do and how will you do it)
In conversation, we probe across many technology areas, including:
- Identity & Access Management
- Communications and Collaboration
- Productivity
- Client Access
- Mobility
- Device Management
- Security & Threat Protection
- Compliance
- Data Proliferation and Storage
- Information/Data Protection
- Applications
- Infrastructure (Physical/Virtual)/Servers
- Networking/Connectivity
- Voice and Video/Phone System
- Datacenter
- Monitoring/Reporting/Auditing
- Business Continuity/DR
- Vendor Solutions
- Licensing
- Adoption & Change Management
- Policies & Governance
After a thorough analysis of the data collected, a final presentation report is drafted, to include:
- Identified phases, by priority, to address business requirements, objectives, or to solve business problems
- Technology approaches to identified phases
- Time to value for each phase
- Estimated duration to complete each phase
- High-level overview or Order of Magnitude costs to implement each phase
- Expected next steps, roles and responsibilities
For strategic execution to be successful, enterprises need to start with a strategic plan which identifies the problems an organisation plans to address, together with why they are worth solving to ensure the whole organisation is pulling in the same direction. More importantly, the plan alignment exercise is meant to affirm stakeholder motivations, ensures all decision-makers and their teams are aligned on the same goals, and receive nods of approval before moving the plan forward.
Join Insentra’s Global Head of Advisory, Lee Foster for a Late Night Brew, and learn more about our Advisory Services.
