Chapter 2 - What's corporate strategy got to do with IT?

Abstract

It's important that IT departments contribute to corporate success. The use of technology itself no longer provides a competitive advantage by default. Companies are looking for IT departments to contribute to the forward progress of the company. The best way to make it happen is when the efforts of the IT department are aligned with corporate strategies and objectives. A notable benefit from this type of alignment is that projects and departments are more likely to gain much needed executive support if the efforts are contributing to the greater good of the company. This chapter provides with some tools that can be used to research and reverse engineer corporate strategy. Corporate strategies (and IT strategies as well) are impacted by what's going on in the external market place. Strategies that originate from these external drivers are often called “business strategies.” The IT department may or may not have business strategies, but it's worth looking at because IT is often impacted by what's happening in the broader technology market and by what's happening with vendors, customers and competitors. This chapter discusses about various methods people use to begin to formulate ideas for strategies including evaluating core competencies, doing an analysis of strengths, weaknesses/limitations, opportunities, and threats and looking at trends.