Aerie Partners Can Help You Execute a Winning Strategy
Technology Strategy, Policy, and Governance
When information technology fails to adequately meet the needs of the business, the root cause can often be traced back to the organization’s technology strategy. The failure to codify the IT strategy in a comprehensive set of IT policies results in complexity and confusion. Robust governance needs to be in place so that business needs inform technology decision, instead of technology being something that is imposed on the business.
A targeted engagement to develop or refine your organizations IT strategy, back it up with a comprehensive set of policies, and make it “the way things are done around here” through governance that brings the business to the table when technology decisions are made can provide your organization with substantial and sustainable benefits.
Benefits
What we do
Outcomes
Strategic Alignment
Technology should never take precedence over business or mission outcomes. A business-driven technology strategy ensures that your technology supports your business or mission. We start by exploring what your organizations needs to do to be successful. From there, we work with you to understand the information that is needed to be successful. With that determined, Aerie Partners will co-create a technology strategy, policies, and governance that is anchored to business success.
IT Cost Reduction
IT governance seeks to answer the questions, “what are the anticipated benefits from a technology investment and how much are we willing to pay for those benefits?” This perspective directs technology spending to the investments that provide the most bang for the buck, which usually will result in lower IT spending, or in cases where spending increases, provides significant new capabilities that justifies the added costs. With proper technology strategy, governance, and policies, IT investments are optimized.
Enhanced Capabilities
As mentioned above in the section on IT cost reduction, the goal isn’t always about reducing costs. With a comprehensive strategy in place, backed by policy and robust governance, IT becomes more aligned to the business which can result in developing new capabilities that significantly increase outcomes.
Compliance
Many compliance and regulatory schemes include requirements for policies and governance. Developing an IT strategy and supporting it policy and governance will make compliance audits less stressful.
Identify Desired Outcomes
The first step is to identify what the desired outcome are. Is your organization looking to reduce costs, become more competitive or something else? Is is more important to be nimble and agile, or are you trying to rein in an overly complex IT environment. Once the goals are known, we can move to the next step. In some cases, you may have a sound IT strategy, but the execution is less than desired. This is a situation where we might want to focus on policy and governance. We will tailor the work to achieve your desired outcomes. An engagement can target strategy, policy, or governance, as appropriate.
Identify Current State
We will work together to get a comprehensive understanding of your current strategy, policies, and/or governance. Once this is known, we have the starting point. This will allow us to develop the plan and prioritize the work that is needed to realize the desired outcomes.
Develop Plan
Your world is moving fast, and it moves faster every year. At Aerie Partners we believe that updating your IT strategy shouldn’t be something you do every three or five years. We will work with you to develop a strategic planning process that is intended to be executed on a regular basis, such as annually, and then we will use the process to cocreate your IT strategy. If your challenges are related to policy and/or governance, we can focus on that first. In all cases, we align with leading practices such as COBIT.
Execute Plan
We will execute the plan that was developed in the first three steps. There will be checkpoints along the way to provide the opportunity to course correct if it looks like changes are warranted. We see strategic planning as an ongoing activity, and not something that is done every three to five years. Similarly, developing policy and governance should be driven by business/mission needs, as it is the way that strategy becomes real.
A technology strategy, policy, and governance engagement can be comprehensive or focused, depending on your organization’s goals. Depending on the scope of the work, the outcomes can include: