Changing business strategies to meet corporate governance needs

In the face of increasingly tightening corporate governance requirements, organisations need to adapt their IT strategies to closer align IT spend with business priorities.

This is the view of Sagaran Naidoo, a business technologist at CA Africa. He says organisations need to run their IT departments "like businesses" and thus be able to rapidly adjust their IT spending to meet changing business requirements.

"Organisations need to demonstrate measurable value from investments made in the various projects currently in the execution phase," he says.

"They also need to prioritise projects based on the value they deliver to the business. The ability to perform `what if` scenarios helps to ensure the optimal mix of projects for a given set of resources.

"Gartner, an independent market research firm, estimates companies improve efficiencies by 30% by implementing IT management and governance (IT-MG) solutions," he says.

"Successful IT-MG initiatives rely upon integrated systems that span the full IT lifecycle encompassing three continuous, integrated processes - selection, delivery and assessment."

Naidoo says a successful IT-MG initiative will enable organisations to:
* Select the correct investments for maximum alignment to business priorities,
* Deliver on these investments using best practices and repeatable processes, and
* Accurately measure the performance of these investments

"A solid IT-MG solution - such as CA`s Clarity - allows you to `do the right things` and `do the things right`.

"Whether used to manage the IT budget and resources or the R&D budget and resources, an IT-MG solution such as Clarity, enables organisations to deliver the highest return from investments by providing maximum visibility of IT or R&D investments."