Shaping Your Business’ Growth: A 5-Step Strategy

Are you thinking of charting out next year’s business goals? Before you do, have you thought about whether your IT infrastructure can support those goals? Well, we are here to talk to you about just that. A robust IT strategy is critical to the growth of your business because your IT infrastructure will only help enhance and improve what you want to do.

Have you considered putting down a personalized IT strategy for your business? Here are five tips to help you.

Outline your business goals

You cannot make a roadmap without a clear outline of your goals for the coming year, and that is why we start here. Future partnerships, your sales funnel and pipeline, acquisitions and mergers you may be considering – once you have the answers to all of these questions, consider how your IT infrastructure will accommodate and support these goals. This will then help you understand whether you have the IT infrastructure needed to achieve this and more so if it’s time to adapt and change.

Identify key people and a timeline

You know best who your key people are and who is responsible for what. It’s now time to identify the key people responsible for delivering your IT strategy. This includes your employees who will liaise with your IT partner, those from an external company you might partner with for IT support, and finally, the people your IT strategy will most impact. After this, find out how they might implement this technology, what changes are required to be made to your current infrastructure and lastly, what elements are vital to them conducting their roles at the best of their abilities. After you have answers to all of this, chart out a timeline that works best for you, your employees and your business – one that is achievable yet ambitious.

Review your current infrastructure

To make improvements, you need to know what is working for your current and what is not.

• What improvements do your employees feel could be made?
• What would make their job easier?
• What is making things more complicated than they need to be?

Once you understand the answers to these questions, you can find solutions that will solve their problems and help them work optimally. Remain mindful that each department will have a different take on these questions and devise solutions that will keep them motivated and happy.

Create your IT roadmap

This is the step where the planning starts. Once you have evaluated your goals, what your employees need, the IT infrastructure you already have and what you will need, it is time to chart out a roadmap for your final IT strategy. This might also be a time you consider tying up with a collaborative strategic IT partner. Now is when your partner should make appropriate recommendations to fit your requirements and suggest the IT tools you will need to achieve your goals.

Define new metrics

Lastly, your new IT strategy shouldn’t only be beneficial to supporting your business goals but cost-effective too. Create new KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) to help you monitor how your performance changes over time after implementing your new IT strategy. Tracking a wide range of metrics will give you insights into what is working, what is not and what needs changing. This will help for long-term improvement.

Your choice of a strategic IT partner is critical to getting this right.