The breadth of technology available in the marketplace is ever increasing. For organisations to deliver at pace and to make the best use of IT to drive your business forward, you’ve got to have access to the best technologies, have them implemented in the best way, and then, when you layer in compliance and security, the number of resources they need is massive.

But how do you get that delivered into your business, how do you keep it secure, and how do you keep it compliant? And, even if you find an MSP that says it can do it all, you then need to trust them to deliver. So where do you start?

Having a solid IT strategy is vital. With the pace at which technology advances and with significant rises across both technology and staffing costs, taking a strategic view of your IT roadmap has never been more important: it ensures that you can synchronise any investment you make with your strategic business goals.

In this article, we look at how you can future-proof your business’ IT with an effective strategy.

Aligning IT strategy and business objectives 

As with any business strategy, aligning to what you’re trying to achieve at an organisational level ensures that you’re investing in and contributing to the future success of your organisation. When it comes to strategy, the IT lead should be involved in creating both the IT and business strategies. Neither should be developed in isolation as both are intertwined, and neither can achieve optimum success without input from both business and IT leaders.

By aligning IT strategy to business objectives and sharing ideas and complementary views, businesses can improve efficiency, reduce costs, and enhance customer experiences. 

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Bringing it back to the business needs 

The foundation of any robust IT strategy lies in thoroughly identifying the organisation’s needs. This involves assessing current capabilities, pinpointing gaps, and anticipating future requirements. A comprehensive IT needs analysis allows businesses to determine where improvements are necessary and how technology can be leveraged to address these areas. 

A detailed assessment of business needs enables business leaders to identify specific pain points and opportunities for improvement. By engaging with various stakeholders to understand their needs and expectations, you can ensure that your IT strategy is comprehensive and inclusive of different teams and requirements as well as overarching business goals. 

Allocating the right resources and budget 

Budget can make or break the effectiveness of any strategy. Yet many businesses fail to allocate what they truly need to meet their ambitious goals, making budget planning an afterthought rather than something calculated and agreed upon throughout. By properly considering the budget and resources needed to meet your aims, you may identify the need to increase targets, hire more staff, or prioritise specific business areas to ensure that you can adequately fund the required investment. Beyond that, locking in budget upfront helps to focus on the return of investment, ensuring that you’ve got the budget you need to deliver the outcome you want. 

In addition to the cost of buying and implementing technology, business leaders need to consider additional indirect costs. For example, they must consider how they will ensure that they have the necessary skills and expertise to make the most of their investments. This might mean expanding their internal headcount or appointing a third-party provider to offer resilience. 

For example, if you’re looking to scale over a short period, having a ringfenced budget will allow you to invest in new systems, adopt and onboard new processes or fund simple – yet critical – items such as increased licensing. If, however, there are no budget allocated to this, a business-as-usual approach will falter.

Leveraging third-party expertise 

While you may be able to develop and execute an IT strategy effectively with your existing resources and capability, there are considerable benefits to working with a third party like us. IT support providers and independent consultants are exposed to a large number of other businesses of all shapes and sizes, which gives them a unique perspective on how other businesses are approaching their IT strategy, investment, and broader IT roadmap. 

This experience enables MSPs to pass on learnings from others, including what has and what hasn’t worked well, as well as how to go from where you are now to where you want to be. They’re also exposed to a much wider product set, offering insights into whether specific solutions are right for your business and whether they’ll enable you to achieve the ROI you’re hoping for. 

Lastly, working with a third party like Arc to develop a strategy enables you to build rapport and trust, testing the waters on whether you could continue to work together long-term should any additional IT support needs arise. We provide valuable support in areas including cybersecurity, data management and cloud services, as well as our internal experts on getting the most out of your Microsoft Copilot, SharePoint, Purview and PowerApps investments, which are critical to modern business operations. 

Our experts work with a range of businesses as fractional CTOs and CIOs – talk to our team today.

IT strategy is not a one-time thing 

You can’t simply just create an IT strategy and then implement it. Instead – as with any strategy – you must regularly review effectiveness against business objectives and needs as they evolve. By doing so, you can ensure that you remain synchronised as business priorities change, as well as protected against new and emerging threats that were not around when the strategy was designed. 

Businesses need to think of technology as part and parcel of what they do, not an afterthought. Those that do will drive the greatest ROI on their investment and reap the greatest rewards. 

The essential components of an IT strategy 

A comprehensive IT strategy should encompass several key components: 

Vision and objectives: what is it you’re trying to achieve? How does this align with business objectives? 

Assessment of our current state of play: how capable is your existing infrastructure in helping you achieve our goals? Where are the gaps? 

Needs analysis: what are our business and individual technological needs? 

Resource allocation: what resource and budget do you need to allow for? What contingencies need to be in place to ensure you stay on track? 

Measuring success: what will be monitored and how will you evaluate if your strategy is working? 

Conclusion

Without a strategic plan, organisations may find themselves reacting to external changes rather than proactively leveraging technology to drive innovation and growth. An IT strategy is crucial for maintaining competitiveness and supporting both business resilience and continuity planning. Failure to have a strategy in place during a time of need can be detrimental to any organisation, with businesses known to have gone from healthy to ceasing trading within a matter of months due to being unprepared for a cyber attack.

Moreover, having a strategy in place helps with wider risk management, identifying potential technological vulnerabilities and establishing protocols to mitigate them.

Defining, discussing, and refining a business strategy fosters collaborative decision-making and provides a clear business roadmap for technology investments and implementations. Your business will naturally prioritise initiatives that deliver the most value, so you can ensure optimal use of resources and avoid the pitfalls of ad hoc or redundant projects.