Creating the strategy-focused IT department

The contribution of IT departments to overall organisational success has been of vital concern to IT directors for a number of years. Rising IT budgets have forced directors to prove the value of their departments to the overall success of the company, yet the reputation and future success of a company often depends substantially on the capabilities and alignment of the IT department.

"As organisations move towards tight economic, bottom line-focused and more value-driven models, it becomes increasingly important for them to expand beyond simple, operational measures," says Bruce Jones, manager of sales support at SAS Institute. SAS is the market leader in providing a new generation of business intelligence software and services that create true enterprise intelligence.

"To be effective, companies need a forward-looking, integrated approach to IT management that takes into account the department's relationships with all parts of the organisation - IT cannot be an island."

Scorecards have proved to be a popular method for organisations to manage how their strategy is implemented and measured. They enable organisations to prioritise key strategic initiatives and measures, allocate the appropriate time and resources to the most important issues, align IT strategy with business strategy and motivate people to achieve the targets.

"But putting strategy into action is a problem in most organisations," says Jones. "The failure does not stem from bad decisions, but from an inability to mobilise the organisation to execute its strategy. Since IT is central to most organisations and the IT staff is accustomed to managing projects and delivering service levels, the IT department is in a prime position to play a significant role in helping an organisation realise its strategy."

According to Jones, the strategy-focused IT department is created using five principles:

* Lead from the top.

* Conduct an organisational assessment, discuss possible future business situations and affirm that value is derived from alignment.

* Translate the strategy into operational terms.

* Turn corporate objectives into IT objectives and define performance measures for each objective.

* Align the department with its strategy.

* Develop strategic IT themes; identify IT processes, projects and internal initiatives supporting each objective. Then rank IT processes, projects and internal initiatives and align responsibilities.

* Make strategy everyone's job.

* Cascade scorecard plans, making individual scorecards for employees. Develop incentives that are aligned to employee scorecards.

* Make strategy a continuous process.

* Tie performance to budget and link with financial processes. Evaluate results and make changes to the strategy as necessary.

SAS Strategic Performance Management captures an organisation's performance management strategy and integrates, distributes and analyses information to help it make the right decisions. Managers get simple, clear indicators of performance that help them to see the causes and effects of the strategy.

"By focusing on a holistic view of the IT contribution to the business, organisations can identify the true sources of problems and the best practices that lead to future success," says Jones. "Strategic performance management gets everyone in the organisation to focus, communicate and collaborate on strategy from a single vantage point ... and turns that strategy into action."

SAS Strategic Performance Management includes a map to define strategic direction; a compass to measure and manage progress toward strategic goals; and a knowledge-base for exploring new opportunities.

SAS provides the driving force behind the only integrated suite of intelligence solutions from a single vendor that facilitates both strategic and operational decision-making. Strategic performance management exchanges information with other business solutions across the organisation - solutions from SAS and other vendors for managing customer and supplier relationships, IT, finance, human capital, quality improvement and risk to ensure everyone is working in sync and heading toward common goals.

The result, according to Jones, is a steady finger on the pulse of all the IT measures that add real value to the organisation's strategy.