5 ways IT insights can support strategy

The ability to effectively define a business strategy by leveraging evidence-based IT insights can be lost in organisations that view their IT team as nothing more than mere technical support.

Darren Christophersen, general manager of Operations, Applications & Consulting at IT Services provider Empired, says: “Organisations that don’t use IT teams and technology partners to drive business strategy are either underutilising or overlooking a valuable resource.”

Instead, businesses should define their strategy based on these five uses of IT insights.

1. Research

IT teams and third party providers can offer informative reports, discussion papers, policy papers and executive briefs on domain or system issues. The insights gained from this research can be used to improve overall business processes, not just IT processes.

2. Business case creation

IT can help to support and verify management decisions with business cases that make strategic recommendations for best practices.

“Difficult executive decisions, such as to buy or build systems, can be simplified by business cases from a technical perspective,” Christophersen adds.

3. Business model verification

IT skills in low-value, high-volume payment systems can help to verify the organisation’s cost-benefit and operational models.

4. Requirements analysis

IT professionals with use-case and prototyping skills can create traceable and measurable customer requirement specifications by conducting artefact reviews, structured interviews and requirements workshops sessions. This helps to ensure customer satisfaction.

5. Project management office review

IT can ensure that the project management office delivers projects aligned to industry best practice by reviewing the methodology used.