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September 30, 2019

How does IT support your business strategy?

By SpiderGroup

Digital Transformation holds a different meaning for different businesses. For us, it means enabling businesses to move fully into the digital age, using technology to achieve your business objectives.

With more advanced technology becoming the office norm, it’s time to realise the impact it can have on your business efficiency. A strong IT infrastructure is the backbone to any strong business plan.

Start by identifying your business objectives

To start you on the path to a collaborative IT and business strategy, you first need to think about your objectives and goals. Where do you want the business to be in 1 year, 3 years, 5 years, 10 years...? Are you a market leader or do you need to stabilise yourself in the sector? Think about developing services you could be offering, or what your business is currently slow to deliver on.

Having a clear idea of your key objectives will help you identify what technologies will be necessary to get you there. For example, if your objective is to improve delivery speeds, you might need systems in place to automate some of your manual processes. If you want to improve customer retention, you may need better documentation and collaboration. If you want to grow your revenue, a way to generate and nurture leads will be important, and so on. 

Assess your current situation

Once you have your vision, you need to look at your existing technology. Understanding and assessing your current position helps you to understand what tools you already have at your disposal, and how far you need to go to meet your goals. 

• Take stock of your hardware and software
• Make note of how old your hardware is and whether it needs updating
• Identify who uses what systems, what is being used as intended and what has been hacked or bodged to try and do what your staff need it to do
• Identify what areas of the business have systems that aren't working
• Audit broken or non-functional items
• Identify security risks

Communicate at this stage with your IT personnel to gauge your IT strengths and weaknesses in comparison to your business goals. Establishing how your current IT infrastructure may be shaping, defining or holding your business vision back helps to view the two in unison.

Figure out how IT will get you where you want to go

It’s time to bridge the gap between where you are now and your business objectives.

Use the data you discovered in the previous step, alongside your defined business goals, to scope out what IT your business really needs.

• What technology will your business require to move forward?
• Do you need to remove manual processes with an ERP system?
• Do you need to improve customer service with a CRM?
• Do you need to solidify your apps and reduce overheads with Microsoft Azure ?
• Is your online server posing a current vulnerability to reaching your business plan?
• Do you need to move your files to the Cloud?
• Do you need to increase collaboration between teams with better software?
• Do you want to realise the benefits of remote working ?

The answers will depend on what you want to achieve in the near and far future. Future-proofing your business may depend on changing the way you do things now, but short term change can set you up to achieve exactly the growth and ambition you have for your business. 

Think about the wider benefits of different changes. Removing manual process with an ERP, for example, will free up employees to focus on more important activities, reducing the time cost of processes that can be automated. You can then either streamline, or redirect focus to higher value work. 

Mapping IT with business

Any change can be an intense process, so it makes sense to take some time and plan out how you intend to go about making your IT align to your business goals. Getting employees to engage with digital transformation is key to making a success of the project, so plenty of planning and communication will be vital. 

There is no sense in updating every single system at once if that means you have to change everything about how you operate all in one go. A staggered implementation might be more suitable, giving you time to bed in each change before moving on to the next. On the other hand, a sweeping change might make more sense for your business - getting expert guidance can be the best way to make sure any changes work for you. 

Map the new IT infrastructures you want to the relevant business objectives - that way you can prioritise and plan out your timescales. 

The implementation of your strategy

It’s important to stay involved with your IT team as you implement the plan. You may need to change scope as the strategy comes into fruition and the best way to understand this is to hear it first hand from your employees.

Change can often be faced with irritation but it's important to understand the difference between reluctance to change, and genuine struggle with adoption. Be on hand to support your employees.

Process and documentation will be your friends during this process. You need everything to be clear and consistent so that your new IT systems are used as intended - there's no sense in putting a lot of time and effort into a transformation project, only for it to fail because everyone is using the new systems differently. 

Keeping a rolling FAQ document will also be helpful - if you're constantly asked about the same topics, you'll know that more training and communication will be required to cover those areas. 

Communicate often and reiterate the reasons for the changes you're making - you want all of your staff to know exactly why you're doing this, and what benefits they and the business will see from it. If there are no benefits to your employees (even simply saving time or effort), you should consider whether or not the change you've identified is the right one. 

Meet the needs of your organisation

Your business strategy needs to be rooted in your business needs. Remember that IT should be an enabler and empowering tool, not a hindrance to your growth. The technology is out there, it’s just a case of research, investment and proper implementation.

SpiderGroup are IT experts and have helped many businesses carry out their IT and business strategy to achieve their goals. If you’d like some assistance with understanding how IT support can help you, get in touch with the team by calling us on 0117 933 0570 or you can fill in our contact form and we will get back to you.

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ITSM for high-velocity teams

What is it service management (itsm).

IT service management—often referred to as ITSM—is simply how IT teams manage the end-to-end delivery of IT services to customers. This includes all the processes and activities to design, create, deliver, and support IT services. 

The core concept of ITSM is the belief that IT should work as a service. A typical ITSM scenario could involve asking for new hardware, like a laptop. You would submit your request through a portal, file a ticket with all relevant information, and kick off a repeatable workflow. Then, the ticket would land in the IT team’s queue, where incoming requests would be sorted and addressed according to importance.

Atlassian for ITSM

The basics you need to know about ITSM with Atlassian – across IT delivery, operations, and support, plus best practices and tips.

Due to their day-to-day interactions with IT, people often misconstrue ITSM as basic IT support. In fact, they’re different. ITSM teams oversee all kinds of workplace technology, from laptops to servers to business-critical software applications. While IT teams focus on managing and maintaining technology infrastructure, ITSM teams are specifically dedicated to optimizing and delivering efficient IT services to meet organizational needs and user expectations.

A common line of thinking in the IT industry is that a proper approach to ITSM should follow three steps in this order: 1) Build and implement IT technology. 2) Bring in and enforce the right process. 3) People learn the technology and abide by the process. 

Atlassian flips that paradigm.

At Atlassian, the team comes first . We’ve even created a team playbook to provide tools that help teams improve how they work. IT teams should be continually learning and improving. They must feel valued and empowered to make a difference in the company. 

Rather than adhering to rules imposed by tiered reporting structures or rigid processes, IT teams can make informed decisions about adopting SLAs and which software they should implement. Strong IT teams are pivotal in fostering productivity and driving digital transformation, making them indispensable for robust company performance. IT teams are the core of IT Service Management (ITSM) processes and technologies.

After focusing on the strength of the IT team, it’s possible to develop unique practices and capabilities to provide value to the company. No matter how reputable the source, it’s insufficient to simply “copy and paste” another company’s set of standards, and hope they will work in your unique environment. 

Successful IT teams craft their approach by drawing from frameworks like ITIL (the Information Technology Infrastructure Library) and carefully adapting processes to align with the needs and preferences of their customers.

Finally, software and technology should support a team’s practices and amplify their impact. The best ITSM software fosters cross-team collaboration, empowers end-users, and automates mundane or routine tasks—giving everyone more time to focus on what matters most. We've all seen instances where technology becomes a hindrance, introducing unnecessary complexity and frustration. 

When technology operates seamlessly, it may seem like magic, but in truth, it’s a reflection of the hard work of the teams that use it.

What is an IT service?

In the context of ITSM, an IT service refers to delivering technology-related support and solutions to end-users or customers. This encompasses a wide range of workplace technologies, including laptops, servers, and business-critical software applications. ITSM teams handle requests and incidents related to these services through structured processes, ensuring service efficiency, reliability, and user satisfaction.

What is an ITSM framework?

Frameworks are tools that provide ITSM with standardized practices and procedures. Frameworks can provide a platform that monitors continuous improvement for service delivery and support. 

ITSM is an IT service management framework that provides services for various IT functions. It defines operating procedures, techniques, and supporting services that deliver efficiency and value to an underlying system's operation. Frameworks help companies define their ITSM strategy.

Popular ITSM frameworks

IT teams use a variety of frameworks to guide their work. The two most common are ITSM and DevOps. Other concepts include COBIT, SIAM, IT4IT, lean, and more. 

Below, we’ll cover two of the most influential frameworks for modern IT teams—ITSM and DevOps—along with a common approach to ITSM. Let’s start by defining some key terms:

As mentioned above, IT Service Management is how IT teams manage the delivery of IT services to customers. How a team approaches ITSM can be structured to align with ITIL practices and influenced by DevOps concepts.

ITIL is the most widely accepted approach to ITSM. ITIL focuses on practices for aligning IT services with business needs. ITIL can help companies adapt to ongoing transformation and scale. 

ITIL 4, the recent update to ITIL standards, represents a paradigm shift for IT teams. It guides teams to a holistic, business, and customer-value frame of reference and encourages a more flexible approach based on how your team works. The ITIL 4 Guiding Principles promote collaboration, simplicity, and feedback. 

People sometimes misrepresent ITIL as “the rules” rather than guidance, but that's open to interpretation. Just because we need to use processes and document work doesn’t mean we should generate cumbersome masses of records and bureaucratic overhead. There is no excuse for hiding behind processes or the ITIL “rules.”

DevOps  emphasizes accelerated IT service delivery enabled by agile and lean practices. DevOps improves collaboration between software development and IT operations teams so companies can build, test, and release software faster and more reliably. Notable benefits include increased trust, faster software releases , quickly solving critical issues, and better managing unplanned work.

Though DevOps includes continuous development , integration, and automated delivery, the concept is based on building a culture of collaboration between teams that historically functioned in relative siloes. Much of the context and ethos behind DevOps is about moving away from old divisions and working together. Unfortunately, people often see this pertaining to just ‘Dev’ and not ‘Ops.’ 

People typically pitch ITSM and DevOps against each other as an ‘either/or’ decision – “we are an ITSM or a DevOps house.” There is confusion about what ITSM and DevOps deliver and how they could work together. Modern, high-performing teams realize they need to be able to work both smarter and quicker but still require process and control. 

It’s time to move beyond the ITSM vs DevOps ultimatum and use elements of both—whether you explicitly follow frameworks or not. DevOps is much more than just automated development and promotes the importance of collaboration and a blame-free culture. Moreover, ITSM and the ITIL approach shouldn’t be pigeonholed as an administrative burden but used in an agile way to fit different companies' unique needs.

Why is ITSM important?

ITSM benefits your IT team, and service management principles can improve your entire company. ITSM leads to efficiency and productivity gains. A structured approach to service management also aligns IT with business goals, standardizing the delivery of services based on budgets, resources, and results. It reduces costs and risks and ultimately improves the customer experience. 

Some of the most common benefits of ITSM include:

• Aligning IT teams with business priorities tracked through success metrics
• Enabling cross-team collaboration 
• Bringing IT teams and development teams together through streamlined project management approaches
• Empowering IT teams to share knowledge and continuously improve
• Improving request coordination for more efficient service 
• Promoting customer-centricity with self-service and better processes 

Responding more quickly to major incidents, and preventing future ones

All of which decrease costs and lead to better service, as well as enhanced employee and customer satisfaction.

ITSM processes and services

ITIL 4 recently shifted from recommending ITSM “processes” to introduce 34 ITSM “practices.” Their reasoning for this updated terminology is so that “elements such as culture, technology, information, and data management can be considered to get a holistic vision of the ways of working.” This comprehensive approach better reflects the realities of modern companies.

Here, we won’t worry about the differences in terminology. What’s important, regardless of your team's framework, is that modern IT service teams use resources and follow repeatable procedures to deliver consistent, efficient service. In fact, leveraging practice or process is what distinguishes ITSM from IT. 

Outlined below are some of the core ITSM processes:

Service request management

Service request management is a repeatable procedure for handling a wide variety of customer service requests, including requests for access to applications, software enhancements, and hardware updates. The service request workstream often involves recurring requests and benefits greatly from enabling customers with knowledge and automating certain tasks.

Knowledge management

Knowledge management  is the process of creating, sharing, using, and managing a company’s knowledge and information. It refers to a multidisciplinary approach to achieving company objectives by making the best use of knowledge.

IT asset management

IT asset management (also known as ITAM) ensures a company’s assets are accounted for, deployed, maintained, upgraded, and properly disposed of when the time comes. In short, it's the process of ensuring that valuable items, whether tangible or intangible, are being tracked and used correctly.

Incident management

Incident management is the process of responding to an unplanned event or service interruption and restoring the service to its operational state. Considering all the software services businesses rely on today, there are more potential failure points than ever, so this process must be ready to quickly respond to and resolve issues.

Problem management

Problem management is the process of identifying and managing the causes of incidents within an IT service. Problem management is not only about identifying and resolving incidents but also finding and understanding the underlying causes of an incident and identifying the best method for eliminating the root causes.

Change management

Change management  ensures standard procedures are used for efficient and prompt handling of all IT infrastructure changes, whether rolling out new services, managing existing ones, or resolving problems in the code. Effective change management provides the context and visibility necessary to avoid bottlenecks and minimize risk.

ITSM software and tools

ITSM software enables IT teams to align with business needs and take a strategic approach to change, transformation, and growth. A wide variety of ITSM software tools are available in the market, from standalone applications to platform services. 

We often hear IT teams complain that the traditional ITSM systems and tools they use are inflexible and, consequently, difficult to customize and adapt to evolving requirements. There also tend to be different tools for the various ITSM processes. 

Modular tools create barriers, silo end users, and cause a lack of visibility across teams. Traditional ITSM tools are often difficult to deploy and manage, leaving end users to adopt tools that aren’t intuitive, which also leads to deficient or non-existent self-service ITSM capabilities.

Choosing the right service desk software for your business is critical, as the service desk is the foundation of a robust ITSM solution. The service desk serves as the interface between customers and the IT team. 

ITIL itself defines a service desk as “the single point of contact between the service provider and the users. A typical service desk manages incidents and service requests, and also handles communication with the users.” 

The service desk should also play an important role in managing other ITSM practices. Consider whether your service desk and other ITSM tools meet the following requirements:

• Easy to use and set up : Comes with a clean, intuitive self-service portal that makes it easy to request help, search for knowledge, and track progress on issues.
• Enables collaboration : Provides a platform for developers and cross-functional teams to work together for faster issue resolution.

Adapts to your needs : Is flexible enough to support any resolution, escalation, or change process your IT teams might dream up.

The choice of service desk software is pivotal, as it forms the foundation of a robust ITSM solution, serving as the interface between customers and the IT team. Jira Service Management stands out as a solution that addresses these challenges, offering an easy-to-use self-service portal, facilitating collaboration among teams, and providing the flexibility needed to support diverse IT resolution, escalation, and change processes.

Accelerating value with collaborative ITSM strategies

ITSM stands at the center of modernizing companies. As the rise of software-powered services accelerates, IT service teams enable employees and teams across companies to deliver value more quickly. The role of the IT team has transformed from supporting the business to actively differentiating the business itself. It’s time to move toward approaches to ITSM that emphasize collaboration, ease of use, and faster value delivery.

Jira Service Management is a valuable platform for ITSM initiatives. It not only supports seven essential ITSM practices but also provides a comprehensive ITSM template . This template facilitates the implementation of key service management workflows, ensuring a quick and efficient start to ITSM processes. By seamlessly integrating with collaborative practices and emphasizing ease of use, Jira Service Management is a strategic tool for IT teams looking to enhance their ITSM strategies and drive value at an accelerated pace.

What is service request management? A guide

Service Request Management enables IT teams to quickly and easily fulfill customer requests. Check out the process and best practices.

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• 2024 UpCity Excellence Awards Honoring the top Top B2B providers in the UpCity community

How Can Information Technology Support a Company’s Business Processes?

Andrew Wisdom

How Can Information Technology Support a Company's Business Processes?

Table of Contents

In addition to guest posting on the UpCity blog, Datalink Networks is featured as one of the Top Managed Service Providers in the United States . Check out their profile!

Information technology influences every part of a company’s systems and decision-making. From marketing to sales, to supply chain and inventory management, everything is impacted by your IT standards and influence.

Ensuring that your company has the right technology and competitive advantage is essential to achieving efficiency and revenue.

With the rise of the cloud, traditional methods of IT management are being replaced by offsite artificial intelligence. Small businesses don’t need to set up large data centers, hire as many professionals or invest in as much on-site protection anymore.

It is highly necessary to maintain up-to-date, complete, and accurate information to stay competitive in today’s changing world.

Organizations utilize different types of information systems to assist in their daily operations. Standard systems include human resources, accounting and finance, sales and marketing, operations, and manufacturing. IT plays different roles in each of these areas.

The differences between the areas of operation of a company can be integrated with a high-quality IT system.

For example, in human resources, information system duties may include recruiting and training. On the other hand, in operations, duties are shifted towards order management and customer service.

Because of all the differences in a network, it’s important to analyze how IT can integrate the whole system to become a well-oiled machine. We will take a look at each branch of a company in the following sections, and how IT can support a company’s business processes.

Communication

IT makes communication fast and efficient which is crucial for thriving in today’s marketplace. You can see this in both the internal and external chains of a company.

Internally, the transfer of information from one department to another is accessible by up-to-date platforms that allow for rapid communication. Having systems like MS Teams in place supported by a reliable IT provider is essential for your team to operate with synergy.

Externally, communication can be presented through video conferencing programs like Microsoft Teams or Zoom. When these programs are working without error, you can perform key functions like making presentations, and stay in constant communication with clients via video or instant messaging.

Marketing is now easier than ever for anyone with the right branding services. Thanks to information technology in business, even the smallest company can establish brand awareness by incorporating modern digital platforms that are more effective than traditional methods.

Without relevant and new platforms to spread your message, your company will not reach the eyes and ears it needs to spread. Since COVID-19, more people than ever are working remotely , and as a result, digitally. This is an opportunity for forward-thinking companies to promote themselves to the largest audience possible, with the help of the right business IT systems.

IT and Decision Making

Information Technology has shaped the way businesses make decisions. It allows them to integrate, access, and utilize databases, and generate accurate analyses. When your company has direct access to databases, it can enhance elements like customer service and research.

Incorporating IT into your business strategy can be used throughout all levels of your company’s plan. Instead of making IT its entity under the command of only the company’s CTO or CIO, IT becomes a core component in all aspects of business operations.

The Chain of Command

When employees ranging from entry-level to CEOs can utilize modern IT, there is a chain of communication available that has never been possible. By being able to pass messages from the bottom to the top link, decisions can be made with lightning quickness by decision-makers. They can plot their next course of action in minutes after someone notices a change in the market. This is the difference between capitalizing on a small window of opportunity and missing out on that opportunity.

The market is changing rapidly, and to keep up with it, businesses must be just as quick and flexible. A fully functional IT plan playing the role of business process support is the foundation of creating a high-speed business environment.

Hear From Industry Experts

Read the latest tips, research, best practices, and insights from our community of expert B2B service providers.

Business Strategies

Cyber hacking is becoming a threat to companies of all sizes. The extent of damage that a single hacker can incur can be devastating. To protect against this possibility, an organization must take swift action. By implementing information technology support in a company’s business processes, you can direct resources toward cybersecurity initiatives including security upgrades, employee training, disaster planning, and data recovery.

Enhancement 

IT systems used in business are more important than ever since the beginning of the pandemic. The majority of the workforce has transitioned to working remotely, and the user base has become accustomed to shopping online. Merging with IT as a business strategy sets the stage for key rollouts that improve the experience for both employees and customers.

Unfortunately, even companies that have implemented tech tools for cybersecurity and enhanced operations are not taking advantage of in-house innovation. Alongside future trends in IT , innovation periods every week, month, or quarter lets your tech professionals tinker with your existing tools and examine new options to provide the most comprehensive solutions for your business processes.

Minimize Cost by Boosting Productivity

IT use in business minimizes costs by boosting productivity. However, to reap this benefit, you need the right management solutions–like the Technology Expense Optimization (TEO).

Most technology expense management (TEM) tools have traditional features. TEM digitizes technology invoices, filters data from invoices, automates invoice verification, and transmits processed invoice data to client accounting systems.

Six key capabilities make Technology Expense Optimization (TEO) different from traditional TEM: dynamic inventory management, service level invoice auditing, embedded exception resolution tools, automated multi-level invoice allocation, proactive contracts management, and custom workflow integration.

These features make a big difference in the daily operations of a business and how efficient it can become.

Improved Customer Service

Information technology is now able to provide advantages to businesses in engendering customer loyalty by improving their customer service . It does this in the following ways:

Information Technology provides areas on your website where customers can answer their questions or seek answers from others.

Business process support tools, like a chat box on your website or a live operator, can identify questions the customer may have. By adopting these resources, your organization will stand out for your ability to quickly respond.

An integrated e-mail network will improve your customer service. When the user sees how quickly you respond to certain needs or help requests, they will be able to trust your company to get their needs met with consistency.

Communications

Unified communications will keep a business organized. For example, it will be known if a customer who leaves a voicemail also sends an e-mail with the same request beforehand.

IT facilitates managing customer relationships with more sophisticated data-gathering tools, such as customer relationship management software.

Customer relationship management (CRM) software is a tech solution that offers businesses the capability to manage communications with their current and potential clients. The leaders in the CRM industry are Salesforce, Zoho, and HubSpot.

Improve Customer Relationships

The goal of your business, in terms of its customer interactions, is to generate loyalty. There’s no better way to do that than by offering quality products and services, and these services allow for quick and effective responsiveness to your customers.

In recent years, new services have come to the market to make it easier for businesses to provide customer service. These services are also increasing the number of channels through which you interact with customers, in addition to the complexity of those interactions.

Businesses that want to use technology to raise the quality of their customer service should focus on the following:

Data Management and Analytics

This service functions by using data collected from customer interests and embedded analytics to analyze and tailor to their preferences.

Insight-Driven Marketing

Gain insight into your business from customer data so you can market more effectively.

Marketing Automation

Streamline and automate business processes to improve efficiency and keep costs low.

Self-service Optimization

Find ways for customers to interact with your business when they want. Do this through chat boxes and live communications via Microsoft Teams.

Workforce Effectiveness

Encourage your staff to embrace new ways of improving customer treatment by providing tools and training to deliver better service.

Updating your business’ IT plan is crucial. Without a high-functioning IT service , a company is one step behind its competitors—and here’s why.

IT providers supplement the excellence of the following branches in organizations:

• Internal and external communication
• High functioning marketing
• Precise decision making
• Minimizing costs
• Improved customer service
• Top tier customer relationships

Support Business Processes with Technology Help

Keeping your process management efficient these days often involves utilizing new technologies and new products. Outsourcing IT support, or a national managed service provider/technology reseller can help your business develop strategic information technology and business process support plans for organizations.

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8 Different Types of Business Application Software

Chloe Henderson

Many companies automate their processes using different types of business application software to enhance operational efficiency and gain actionable insights into front and back-office functions. According to an Adobe study, 30% of business owners that adopted automated technology prioritized saving time while 25% wanted big data analysis. By saving time on standard procedures, employees can invest their efforts in more demanding tasks, optimizing workflow. Through this enhanced productivity and access to data reports, organizations can focus on increasing their profits and expansion. There are many types of business software, each providing organizations with unique benefits for enhanced data management and access to insights.

Benefits of Business Application Software

• Quality and Consistency - System software ensures that all operations are performed uniformly, creating consistent results. Therefore, businesses can ensure their workflow is consistent and expect the same outcome each time. By eliminating the time it takes to monitor processes actively, companies can focus on more demanding tasks.
• Time Savings - By automating repetitive procedures, software allows employees to focus manual labor on more complicated tasks, reducing time and human error.
• Metric Availability - Software uses real-time data from various operations, which can be collected and generated into reports and analyses to monitor key performance indicators (KPIs).
• Optimized Operational Efficiency - With reduced time, labor costs, and effort needed to complete standard procedures, operational efficiency is significantly increased.
• Minimized Turnaround Times - A software solution maintains consistent results through automation, streamlining processes, and reducing turnaround times for employees and consumers. This promotes growing businesses and the satisfaction of internal and external associates.
• Reduced Labor Costs - Manually performing tasks is time-consuming, expensive, and can lead to human errors that often require additional expenses to reconcile discrepancies. Therefore, project management software ensures that companies are minimizing the resources needed to conduct basic processes.

Types of Business Application Software

Studies show that multitasking is actually counterproductive to operations and can reduce company productivity by up to 40%. With an automated operating system, business owners can rest assured that tasks are completed efficiently by allowing employees to focus their attention on more intensive tasks. No matter the objective of an organization, there is a software solution to optimize nearly every process, including- 1. Human Resource Information System (HRIS) A Unit 4 study disclosed that globally, office employees spend nearly 70 days a year on administrative processes, costing businesses approximately $5 trillion annually. As HR is one of the most essential sectors in any business, implementing a human resources software program can streamline several clerical tasks. Recruitment, employee onboarding, record keeping, training, and payroll can all be monitored and automated through HRIS, which handles digital documentation. 2. Inventory Control System As one of the standardized business solutions, inventory management systems monitor stock levels, updates, turnover rates, and automates cycle counts. Integrating inventory systems with replenishment solutions enables automatic reorder points and point-of-sale (POS) systems to show real-time quantities on all items. This software application eliminates the need to assign employees to manually count, record, and cross-examine stock across multiple locations, saving time and money. Inventory control solutions can also alert users immediately when it detects an error or discrepancy so that warehouse management can rectify the situation promptly. 3. Communication Software In order to adequately exchange data, companies need to ensure that communication throughout all departments and locations is streamlined. Communication software, such as web-based email and Microsoft Office, is commonly used to enhance information sharing both internally and externally. However, organizations can also use a cloud-based system integrator to connect all existing software. This creates a centralized database that allows verified users to access reports at any time and work seamlessly with other departments. 4. Accounting Software Accounting software helps financial advisors monitor business performance by tracking real-time expenses, revenue, and the bottom line. With up to date information, accountants can ensure books contain relevant data, and the business remains profitable.

5. Service Management Solution Customer relationship management systems enhance every interaction between a business and consumer, such as transactions and customer service. An effective solution not only enhances the customer experience to save clients time but adequately addresses their concerns in an orderly fashion as well. 6. Reservation Software With a cloud-computing reservation system, appointment-based businesses, such as medical offices, salons, and restaurants, can consolidate in-person and online reservations. By integrating appointments from all platforms, companies can prevent understaffing shifts and overbooking clients, hindering customer satisfaction and loyalty. 7. Schedule Management System Modern cloud-based scheduling software allows business managers to access and alter employee schedules from anywhere at any time. Some providers offer a web-based interface and mobile app, along with an on-site monitor that allows management and employees to interact and confirm shift swaps and time-off. This accessibility ensures that users can change schedules promptly to avoid confusion and employee absenteeism. Schedule management software also handles labor budgets and payroll to monitor pay cycles and identify top-performers. 8. Demand Forecasting Software When integrated with POS and inventory systems, demand forecasting software can sift through historical and real-time sales and stock data to project future customer demand. The data can then be automatically consolidated and generated into detailed reports and analyses to provide actionable insights. With forecasting, organizations can prepare for spikes and dives in demand through proper inventory management, saving on stock and labor costs. There are different types of application software available to fulfill various business needs, regardless of the company's size or industry. Through automated project management solutions, organizations can save time, capital, and effort on standard processes.

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What Is IT Service Delivery? (Challenges, Examples)

• Published: December 12, 2023
• Updated: March 7, 2024

Getting IT services into end users’ hands is critical to building successful IT environments. Whether you’re resetting a forgotten password or fixing a malfunctioning laptop, teams can’t do their job properly without the IT services that enable them to be productive and efficient. 

It’s critical to invest in building strong IT service delivery processes, including tools that can make it all happen. Here’s everything you need to know about IT service delivery.

What is IT Service Delivery?

IT service delivery refers to the methods of providing and managing IT services to organization members or end-users. This includes everything from connecting users to available services to maintaining, updating, and troubleshooting deployed software. 

IT service delivery processes not only ensure that end-users get the IT services they need but also that those services function as they should.

What is an IT Service Delivery Manager?

IT service delivery managers oversee the delivery of IT services. They are responsible for ensuring services are delivered to the expectations established in service level agreements and that they appropriately fill the various needs of the business and end-users. 

IT service delivery managers are in charge of IT service management (ITSM) ; this includes: addressing service issues, identifying opportunities for improvement, and ensuring the IT services provided are aligned with the organization’s overall goals and objectives.

Components of IT Service Delivery

Let’s run through a quick breakdown of the various components of IT service delivery:

• Service level management: Service level management (SLM) ensures IT services meet performance expectations through creating and monitoring service level agreements (SLAs). 
• Financial management for IT services: Financial management involves budgeting and managing costs associated with maintaining and delivering various IT services. 
• Capacity management: Capacity management oversees the IT servers, networks, and storage to ensure there are enough resources to meet current and future service demands. 
• Availability management: Availability management makes sure IT services are available when needed and that risks are appropriately managed.
• IT service continuity management: IT service continuity management involves creating and implementing processes to maintain service continuity in case of a system failure or disruption.

Benefits of IT Service Delivery

Effective IT service delivery helps boost productivity and improves overall user satisfaction. Here’s how improving IT service delivery can benefit your business:

• Improves operational efficiency. Standardized IT delivery procedures and best practices can streamline operational processes and enable the IT department to work more efficiently. This can improve response time, resource utilization, and overall team productivity. 
• Manages costs. Efficient IT service delivery optimizes resource utilization and minimizes downtime, helping to manage costs and reduce expenses. Proper IT service delivery also makes it easier for the business to budget and manage financial resources to maximize IT ROI. 
• Strengthens risk mitigation and enhances security. IT service delivery should also include measures to identify and mitigate risks, including regularly updating software, monitoring for potential threats, and having a plan in place to maintain connectivity in the event of a failure or disruption. 
• Improves customer satisfaction. An IT service delivery framework provides quick and efficient issue detection and resolution, minimizing service disruptions and improving the overall customer experience. Providing user-friendly service catalogs, transparent communication, and personalized services can also improve customer satisfaction.

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Common Challenges of IT Service Delivery

While IT service delivery is beneficial, it doesn’t come without a few challenges. It’s important to be mindful of issues that may arise, including:

• Lack of established KPIs. Clearly defined key performance indicators (KPIs) make it easier to measure IT service delivery success. Without them, it can be difficult to make data-driven and informed decisions when looking for areas of improvement or opportunities to increase user satisfaction. 
• Lack of communication with stakeholders. IT service delivery should be aligned with overall business objectives but without clear communication and input from key stakeholders, it can be difficult to collaborate with other teams and departments. 
• Inability to iterate. IT service delivery should be a dynamic process that easily adapts as business needs change and evolve. Being unable to iterate can lead to the company’s IT environment growing stale and falling short of end-user needs and expectations. 
• Lack of contextual support to end-users. Users need support tailored to their unique needs — something that can be tricky for IT teams. If users are not getting the help they need when it comes to IT service delivery, it can lead to frustration and resistance to working with IT teams.

Examples of IT Service Delivery

IT service delivery is a standard part of day-to-day business operations. Here are five common examples of IT service delivery.

1. Credential resets

When a user forgets their username or password or otherwise needs to reset their login credentials, the IT department must verify the user’s identity and help them get back into their accounts. This may be through delivering a temporary password or by prompting the user to answer pre-set security questions.

2. Provision of accounts

Provisioning accounts refers to the process of getting new employees or users set up with a new account. IT needs to collect relevant information from the user, assign the appropriate accesses and permissions, and ensure the new user can access and log in to their new account.

3. Equipment repair

When equipment hardware breaks or malfunctions, IT must be able to fix those issues or replace broken parts. This process typically involves accepting a repair request from the user, determining the best course of action to solve the problem, and ultimately delivering the necessary repairs or replacements.

4. Software implementation

Implementing software requires deploying and configuring new software applications and updating existing ones, including ensuring that software is properly installed, configured, and accessible to all relevant individuals across the organization. It may also involve proper software testing, training, and ongoing maintenance.

5. Storage requests

As departments run out of storage and need additional space to accommodate their growing data and workloads, IT must be able to deliver additional storage space. This may involve provisioning storage on services, in the cloud, or in hybrid storage situations.

IT Service Delivery Tools

The right tools can make delivering IT services easier. Here are some IT service delivery tools to consider.

1. Help desks

A help desk serves as a central point for collecting user service requests and providing them with resources, instructions, or support to solve their problems. It makes it easier for end users and IT teams to communicate and facilitates fast problem resolution. A help desk tool can also provide automation tools and features to make issue resolution even easier.

2. IT service catalogs

An IT service catalog shows end users what services and resources are available to them. Through the catalog, they can request access to new tools or services, or gather information about available resources to improve decision-making. The IT service catalog also enables IT teams to track service requests to better understand service requirements and needs.

3. Digital adoption platforms

A digital adoption platform (DAP) uses interactive guides and in-app tutorials to introduce new technologies or applications to users. As part of an IT service delivery plan, a DAP can play a critical role in onboarding, training, and collecting feedback from end users. Using a DAP can simplify IT delivery and take complicated manual tasks off your team’s plate.

Software clicks better with Whatfix's digital adoption platform

Enable your employees with in-app guidance, self-help support, process changes alerts, pop-ups for department announcements, and field validations to improve data accuracy.

4. Knowledge base management

Knowledge bases provide instructions, guidance, and additional resources to teams and end users, enabling them to troubleshoot problems and solve issues on demand. A knowledge base can walk users through how to solve common problems and troubleshoot minor issues, enabling them to get the support they need faster and on their own time.

5. Log management

A log management tool provides standardization to the process of collecting, storing, and managing IT service delivery information. Log management tools help identify ongoing problems and responses to incidents and enable IT teams to detect anomalies faster. They can also support IT teams in planning for capacity changes to stay on top of changing demands.

Best Practices for IT Service Delivery

Improve your IT service delivery with these best practices.

• Clearly define IT service delivery KPIs. Set specific, measurable benchmarks to determine how successful your IT service delivery is. 
• Track and monitor KPIs regularly. Regularly track your KPIs to see if you’re on track to meet your performance benchmarks. 
• Develop workflows to improve efficiency. Well-defined workflows can streamline IT operations and improve consistency across service delivery processes. 
• Provide transparent and regular reporting on KPIs. Communicate performance trends to identify opportunities for improvement and facilitate better decision-making.
• Collect continuous feedback and iteration. Work with IT teams and end users to collect and implement feedback to continuously improve your service delivery.

Take some pressure off your IT teams’ hands with a digital adoption platform like Whatfix. Streamline service delivery processes with in-app guidance and deliver real-time support, reducing the amount of manual training and instruction needed from your IT team. And with user behavior analytics, you can gain clear insights into how users are interacting with your IT services. With a more complete understanding of how your end users are behaving, you can improve your IT service offerings and enhance overall efficiency. 

Get started today to see what Whatfix can do for you.

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IT Strategic Plan: A 5-Step Planning Process (With Template)

Looking for a way to execute key IT and digital initiatives faster to support business growth? Sounds like you need a strong and well-thought-out IT strategic plan.

On paper, it sounds easy to do, right— “a well-crafted IT strategy should set a clear path on how you’re planning to enhance the business’s performance with technology.”

But developing and executing one isn’t a simple task. According to Gartner’s CIO survey , only 29% of CIOs consider their organization effective at IT strategy and planning. It’s a complex, time-consuming, bang-your-head-against-wall process (if you don’t have the right approach). 

Not to worry—that's why we're here. In this article, we’ll cover the key elements of an IT strategy plan and share a practical step-by-step process with examples to help you create and execute your own. 

Oh, did we mention you get a free IT strategic plan template ?

Ready? Discover how to create an actionable and execution-ready IT strategic plan the Cascade way!

In this article, you’ll discover: 

• What Is an IT Strategic Plan?
• The Benefits of IT Strategic Planning
• Key Components of an Execution-Ready IT Strategic Plan
• The 5 Steps of a Highly Effective Strategic IT Planning Process
• IT Strategic Plan Example + Template

Take Control of Your IT Strategic Planning with Cascade 🚀

What Is An IT Strategic Plan?

An IT strategic plan is a roadmap that outlines an organization's goals and objectives for using technology to achieve its business objectives. It provides a framework for making technology-related decisions and investments that align with the organization's overall strategy .

The Benefits Of IT Strategic Planning For CIOs

In today's fast-paced and competitive environment, CIOs use IT strategic planning process to:

• Set and align IT priorities with business objectives and goals. 
• Prove the value and impact of IT within the organization to increase credibility and influence.
• Assess potential risks and vulnerabilities, and develop proactive measures to prevent financial losses and reputational damage.
• Improve communication and collaboration by breaking down silos, ensuring everyone is on the same page, and rowing in the same direction. 
• Focus on IT projects with the greatest potential for impact and ROI, maximizing the value of IT investments and ensuring efficient use of resources.
• Help organizations stay ahead of digital transformation , technology trends and adapt to changing business needs, keeping technology aligned with organizational needs.

Key Components Of An Execution-Ready IT Strategic Plan

An execution-ready IT strategic plan is more than words on paper. It’s an action plan to improve your company’s technological capabilities and deliver business value. 

If you want to inspire alignment and drive ownership for successful strategy execution, your IT strategic plan should include these elements:

🔎 Focus areas : Where should your team focus the attention and efforts? What area of IT will have the most impact on the business strategy?

📌 Goals and objectives: What do you want to achieve exactly? Your goals and objectives are the outcomes you’re aiming for. 

💰 Budget: What resources do you have to achieve your goals and objectives? Are your plans realistic?

😎 Owners: Who is in charge of projects and accountable for their success? Your IT strategic plan needs individuals or teams to ensure it is executed.

📆 Due dates: When do specific actions, initiatives, and projects need to happen? Your IT strategic plan needs timeframes and deadlines to be enforced and acted upon.

📤 Actions: What specific initiatives, deliverables, or projects need to happen within your focus areas? Your IT strategic plan should provide clear and actionable steps for teams to reach goals.

📈 Measures: How will you track progress as your teams execute? Which are the most important IT KPIs your team should track and report upon? A solid IT strategic plan will have an element of progress tracking that promotes consistency and accountability .

👉 Click here to get your free IT strategic plan template (P.S.: The template has all the key elements described above and is pre-filled with examples so you can start working on it right away.)

The 5 Steps Of A Highly Effective Strategic IT Planning Process

So, now that you know which elements you need to include in your IT strategic plan , let's explore how to get there.

Here are five steps to achieve effective IT strategic planning and execution:

1. The alignment phase: IT strategy is part of your business strategy

While IT strategic planning focuses on medium-term goals, CIOs must consider the realm beyond their IT environment (i.e., your company goals).

In the HBR survey , 77% of respondents said the disconnect between IT and business strategies is resulting in significant costs. 

This is a vital consideration for IT leaders. You must be aware of the dangers of misaligned or isolated strategic planning. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking your IT planning process is separate from other business processes or goals. 

To top it off, a study from Workday found that one-third (31%) of companies are rarely aligned on their digital finance transformation goals, with CFOs citing this as a top barrier to successful digital transformation initiatives. 

Focus less on technology talk and more on business strategy outcomes. 

Schedule a strategic planning workshop and kick it off with a recap and discussion about goals that the company is pursuing to understand how technology can help achieve those goals. 

👉Here’s how Cascade can help you:  

Use the Alignment View to get a visual overview of strategic alignment between your IT plan and business strategy. You can also use it to check how your existing IT initiatives contribute to the success of the business strategy.

2. The analysis phase: What should your IT strategy focus on

According to Gartner 's 2023 CIO and Technology Executive Survey, 95% of organizations struggle to develop a vision for digital change, often due to competing stakeholder expectations.

Sure, the squeaky wheel usually gets the most grease, but don’t use this as your base to identify strategic priorities. This approach won’t move the needle for the organization. Instead, focus on what will have the highest impact on the organization in the future and prioritize those initiatives .

As a strategic leader and changemaker, you’ve got to ask yourself: 

• How should the business approach these challenges? 
• What projects should we prioritize for maximum impact in the future? 
• If everyone’s investing in automation, cybersecurity/information security, and data centers, should we be doing the same? 
• Do we have enough resources to support our current strategy, or do we need to develop new resources? 

Researching IT priorities for your organization based on market impact is a good start, and you can do this with reports, industry research, and other data.

But, Gartner also suggests that you should also look to others within your organization to provide insights and different perspectives on priorities and challenges, for example:

• Leadership signals. 
• Stakeholders in the business who share your vision (Ideal Partners).

💡 Top tip: Your people and teams are valuable assets for identifying areas of IT investment. Bring key stakeholders into your strategic planning process to level up your strategic analysis and research.

3. The goal-setting phase: Who is responsible for what?

Next, decide how your IT strategic plan will filter into actionable projects for different teams to execute.

To drive outcomes, goals need to have owners who will manage their initiatives to completion. These initiatives also need to be aligned with your high-level planning as well as the organization’s broader strategic objectives .

Sound like a difficult balancing act? Not if you take a systematic approach. 

A simple way to get started with goal-setting in a strategy-aligned way is to use a three-column table.  

• Jot down business objectives and problems in column A.
• See how your IT strategy can support or improve them in column B.
• Assign project owners to each initiative in column C.

For example:

Column A: What are our business goals or problems? 

• Improve customer experience

Column B: How can our IT strategy support it?

• Optimize our data analytics capabilities and IT infrastructure.
• Implement new CRM software.
• Develop and deploy new digital solutions to improve customer experience.

Column C: Who is responsible for achieving this?

• Optimize our data analytics capabilities and IT infrastructure → Data Analytics Manager & Data Team.
• Implement new CRM software → Customer Support Team & IT Team.
• Develop and deploy new digital solutions to improve customer experience → Customer Experience Manager & IT Team.

Setting your IT goals this way will ensure that actions consistently align with your company’s strategic objectives. You’ll also be able to see if your strategic goals are realistic and within your budget. Plus, you'll ensure each goal has an owner rather than lacking clarity over accountability and realizing this in your next review. 

Once you’re done, go through your table and look for overlapping imperatives, opportunities to streamline execution, and how to prioritize goals. 

Additionally, share them with other key internal and external stakeholders, get feedback, and make changes based on their perspectives. 

👉Here’s how Cascade can help you:

With Cascade's Strategy Planner, you can easily set IT goals and align them with business objectives in a centralized platform. During setup, you'll be able to add a goal's owner, collaborators, due dates, and measure of success. Doing so can keep everyone on the same page and accountable for progress. 

Here’s an example of IT objectives and goals in Cascade:

4. The execution phase: How to get it right

The way you approach strategy execution can make or break the work you’ve put into your strategic planning. 

A successful and fast execution phase has two equally important parts:

• Building a clear and actionable execution plan with key elements developed in the previous steps. 
• Communicating this plan to your stakeholders. Not just to your IT department, but to everyone who will be involved or affected by the execution of your plan. 

To execute your IT strategic plan successfully, ensure that your stakeholders understand the IT strategy's goals, importance, and potential impact. Clarify IT governance, functions, and responsibilities, and establish communication channels to support transparency and cross-collaboration. 

Clarity and strong execution are critical to achieving your IT goals and delivering real value.

Here are two things you can do to get it right:

• Use visual tools: Create strategic roadmaps to communicate plans and timelines.
• Get the wheel spinning early in the process: Hold a workshop or meeting to officially kick off your execution phase. Use this opportunity to explain the strategic direction, who will be involved in the execution, and why you are doing it. 

👉Here’s how Cascade can help you: 

Simplify how you view your planning and execution: Cascade’s Timeline (Roadmap) view lets you visualize IT goals, plans, and progress in an easy-to-read Gantt-chart-style interface. Use it to plan and monitor your IT strategic plan in one place.

5. The monitoring and adaption phase: Stay on your toes

According to Gartner’s survey of 2,387 CIOs and technology executives, more than half of digital transformation initiatives take too long to execute and more than 50% take too long to realize value.  

Strategy execution isn’t a matter of set-and-forget or one-then-done. 

Plans must be acted on, projects must move forward, and expectations must be met. If you're not actively monitoring strategic initiatives, how do you know if you’ll be able to deliver the promised business value of IT? 

Progress reporting and monitoring should be a top priority for CIOs after a strategy kickoff, especially since only 18% of team members review progress on weekly basis. This means enforcing KPIs (key performance indicators), using the right tools to monitor performance, and regular check-ins with IT project owners. 

Sure,  it’s easier said than done at scale, but here are some tips to get it right:

• Use a performance management system: Use it to get an accurate picture of milestones, top performers, and address execution issues proactively.
• Be ready to adapt and optimize:  Any solid strategic plan will include long-term initiatives that can take three or five years to implement. A great one will be ready to pivot and change in the face of new technology, information, and approaches. Being flexible and open to new opportunities is essential to stay ahead in today's constantly evolving landscape.
• Stop wasting time with manual reporting: The old way of PPT presentations, Word docs, and PDF reports won’t cut it in today’s pace of business. Think about it—every second used to type, send, and read those reports could be channeled into achieving better business outcomes. 

👉Here’s how Cascade can help you: Leverage data sources from anywhere: Cascade's thousands of integrations allow you to consolidate disconnected business tools in one place, reducing context switching and helping to create a single source of truth.

Monitor progress with live dashboards: Use a powerful Dashboards feature to streamline insights into performance, monitor critical metrics, and promote data-driven decision-making.

Keep everyone in the loop: With Cascade’s Strategy Reports , you can instantly visualize data, contextualize any breakthrough or setback, and share updates with your teams in engaging ways.

Example of a report in Cascade.

📌Remember that successful IT strategies depend on:

• Proper research and planning.
• Involving different stakeholders in the strategic planning process.
• Setting realistic goals.
• Communicating the strategic plan effectively to a wider audience.
• Monitoring progress and adjusting as teams execute.

IT Strategic Plan Example + Template 

Get a headstart on your IT strategic planning with our IT Strategic Plan Template . 

What do I get?  This information technology strategic plan comes prefilled with IT KPIs, Projects, Goals, and Focus Areas to help you hit the ground running. 

What if I want to customize it? While it’s pre-filled with examples, you can easily adjust, modify, and customize input to meet your needs. 

Is it right for me? It’s perfect for CIOs, IT departments, and digital transformation leaders who need to create a strategic plan for their departments and show the ROI of IT initiatives to the leadership team. 

👉What are you waiting for? Start developing your IT Strategic Plan today. Click the link here and get your free template. 

✨ This template doesn’t match your needs? You can explore our strategy template library with over 1000 templates, including: 

• Digital Transformation Plan Template
• Technology Roadmap Plan Template 
• Digital Adoption Strategy Template

A well-thought-out IT strategic plan is critical for IT leaders who want their organization to stay relevant in a rapidly changing world.

But it’s not enough to maintain a competitive edge and grow your business. Companies with growth-focused mindsets need a platform that makes strategic execution central to how they do business.

With Cascade, you can turn your IT vision into a future-proof strategic plan your teams can work towards and deliver business results. 

Start today with a free forever plan or book a 1:1 product tour with Cascade's in-house strategy expert.

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How to Create an IT Strategy Plan

Home / IT Strategy / How to Create an IT Strategy Plan

The days when IT teams could make tech-related decisions in silos are long gone. Today, an IT strategy plan must align with and directly support the company's overall mission and goals. Otherwise, you risk a lack of cohesion between tech choices and business objectives, which leads to ineffective use of resources, slower time-to-market, and needlessly high expenses.

This article is a guide to creating an IT strategy plan that ensures your tech stack aligns with and keeps up with business goals. Read on to learn how to make a well-rounded strategy that complements your company's ambitions and sets a high-ROI foundation for all IT decision-making.

What is an IT Strategy Plan?

An IT strategy plan is a document that outlines how a company's tech stack supports business goals. This document provides an in-depth breakdown of the organization's investment in and use of technology, explaining IT's role in the company's overall direction.

IT strategy plans analyze the current tech posture and provide a detailed "blueprint" of where IT is heading (typically in the 3-5 years span). Companies formalize the plan either as a written document or a detailed balanced scorecard (BSC) map.

At its most basic, an IT strategy plan answers three broad questions:

Where are we right now?

This "phase" of the plan tackles matters such as:

• What are the overall goals and aspirations of the business?
• How are we leveraging our current tech stack?
• Is IT somehow holding us back?

Where do we want to be?

This aspect of an IT strategy plan covers questions like:

• How can IT help us get to where we want to be?
• How can we improve our tech stack to support short and long-term goals?
• Can we use our resources more effectively?

How are we going to get there?

This part of the plan tackles questions like:

• What initiatives must we launch to get our IT to its desired state?
• When will the new improvements be up and running?
• How much will the project cost?

Although IT strategy plans address complex topics, these are primarily business documents. Tech-savvy experts must consult upper management (CIOs, CEOs, legal departments, etc.) when planning, and strategies should be free of technical jargon.

An IT strategy plan must be an ongoing project, not a one-time event . Documents require regular reviews and must be flexible enough to adjust to changing priorities (e.g., a new business goal, latest market conditions, new budgets, etc.).

Remember that an IT strategy plan is strategic, not tactical. The document primarily focuses on the whats , whys , and whens of your tech stack, not on hows .

Example of an IT Strategy Plan

The scope and format of plans vary between companies and projects. Here is a high-level example of an IT strategy plan for an SMB looking to bring services to a new market:

Upcoming business objective: Expand services to the XYZ market.

How IT helps us meet our business goal:

• Set up a new dedicated infrastructure.
• Create new localized features.
• Ensure existing users do not start suffering performance issues.
• Check new systems for vulnerabilities .
• Help gather early feedback from new users.

A breakdown of to-do IT projects:

• Deploy a local cloud-based environment to ensure low latency and high availability for services in the new region.
• Design, test, and integrate new feature(s) into the existing app.
• Deploy the updated app into production when ready.
• Scale current system resources to avoid performance issues.
• Set up a CRM platform to collect feedback from new users.
• Perform in-depth testing of new systems.
• Set up continuous monitoring for the new app and hosting environment.

Each of these high-level strategies demands further planning. For example, the first section (deploy a cloud-based infrastructure) requires the team to:

• Assess whether the cloud will meet the expected metrics dictated by business objectives.
• Choose an ideal cloud deployment model .
• Create a detailed cloud computing strategy.
• Perform initial threat modeling .
• Consider how the inclusion of the cloud impacts the existing app architecture .
• Find a cloud provider that offers the right mix of services.
• Estimate the project budget (both upfront and post-deployment cloud costs ).
• Create a cloud migration plan.
• Set up user accounts and access rights.
• Design and test the new environment.
• Deploy resources.
• Set up cloud monitoring .

While there's no need for a detailed step-by-step explanation, each task requires expected results, metrics, a timetable, go-to personnel, and a list of associated dependencies.

There are no go-to formulas for IT strategizing, but all solid plans share a few similarities. Good strategies are concise, data-driven, based on inter-team collaboration, and never make decisions in a vacuum.

Why Do You Need an IT Strategy?

Here are the main reasons why organizations set aside time and resources to create an IT strategy plan:

• Align the tech stack with business goals: An IT strategy plan ensures your technologies actively support the company's short and long-term objectives.
• Better IT across the board: You proactively identify and remove issues, such as outdated hardware in a server room or too much cloud sprawl . You also identify new IT-related opportunities with more consistency and regularity.
• More agility: Companies that invest in IT strategies boost business agility and ensure teams respond quickly to changing market conditions and customer needs.
• More informed tech-related decisions: A strategy clarifies the direction and priorities of your IT. As a result, decision-making becomes more data-driven, precise, and impactful.
• Less risk: IT planning helps identify and mitigate potential risks. Current stacks become more secure, while new projects become secure by design as teams consider risks from the get-go.
• Quicker time-to-market: A sound strategy communicates plans in an actionable and transparent way. Teams more effectively carry out responsibilities and ship products faster.
• Lower IT costs: An IT strategy plan optimizes the expenses of tech resources, uncovers cost reduction opportunities, and ensures there is little to no overhead.
• Better communication between teams: The collaboration required for effective IT strategizing improves the communication between the IT department and other parts of the organization ( DevOps , business planning, executives, sales teams, etc.).

Only 29% of CIOs describe their IT planning as "effective." Every one of these executives cites an overarching strategy as a critical factor in correct decision-making.

Main IT Strategy Components

A plan must include all the info the organization requires to make sound tech-related decisions. Below is a look at all the major components of a well-rounded IT strategy plan.

1. Business Goals and Objectives

This section outlines each objective the company hopes to achieve in the coming years. Most plans cover a period of 3 to 5 years and provide detailed expectations on what executives intend to achieve.

This section also often includes additional corporate info, such as:

• Company history and timeline.
• Core values.
• Presentations of different teams, departments, and key staff members.
• Current pain points.
• Any high-level limitations and requirements.
• Current budgets and spending forecasts.
• Market and industry trends.

No matter how much extra info the strategist adds here, this section focuses primarily on the objectives. Companies typically have a mix of short and long-term initiatives. For example, improving customer experience is a long-term goal (and an ongoing one). Examples of short-term goals are moving to a new data center or adding an extra feature to an application .

2. High-Level IT Strategies

Once you pass the part with overall goals, the plan explains how using technology will help the company reach its objectives. This section presents:

• High-level IT objectives and missions.
• How each initiative helps support business goals.
• Any emerging tech, tools, or frameworks that show promise.
• Relevant challenges and problems.

The strategist's goal here is to define how the current tech stack can best support business goals. Authors list all current and future IT projects and initiatives with the following info:

• Milestones.
• Allocated budgets.
• Expected results.

The IT's alignment with business objectives must keep updating at the same pace as overall goals. Each time there's a change in the company's direction (i.e., an update in the previous section), the team must review the entire IT strategy plan, starting from this section.

3. Governance Rules

This section outlines the roles and responsibilities of IT stakeholders across the business. Here's also where companies present policies and procedures on how the organization accepts, evaluates, deploys, and manages new initiatives.

If a company falls under an industry or region-specific regulation (such as CCPA or HIPAA ), this is where you'll find a detailed guide for compliance .

Some companies opt to merge governance with Business Goals and Objectives, but separating the two sections is the more popular option. Either way, rules must not be too stiff—too little governance leads to mistakes and shortcuts, but too many procedures slow down processes and steer teams away from innovation.

4. Assessment of Current IT

This section presents an in-depth overview of the existing IT department and offers details on all:

• Physical and virtual data centers (computer rooms, IDFs, DMARCs, racks, third-party hosting solutions, cloud offerings, edge computing environments, etc.).
• Infrastructure equipment ( storage area networks (SANs) , routers, hardware firewalls , switches , modems, IoT equipment, etc.).
• Servers (SAPs, web servers , ERPs, database servers , email servers , etc.).
• Networking and server software (OS licenses, server operating systems , third-party software , custom in-house software, etc.).
• Contracts and leases for hardware, software, and services (including maintenance contracts).
• All utility equipment (power supplies, backup generators, etc.).
• IT personnel, their roles, and skill sets.
• Per-asset initial cost and ongoing expenses.
• Computing devices (laptops, desktops, cell phones, tablets, BYOD devices, etc.).
• Tools, systems, and protocols teams use.

The more in-depth this section goes, the better. Companies require a complete understanding of the current tech stack to make correct decisions, so strategists typically aim to provide as much info about IT as possible.

5. In-Depth Security Analysis (with SWOT)

The authors use this section to outline a detailed breakdown of all current security measures. Every IT system needs, at a minimum, a firewall and anti-virus program, but you can also use:

• Perimeter networks (DMZs).
• Intrusion detection systems (IDSes) .
• Anti-malware programs.
• Encryption and masking techniques.
• Multi-factor authentication.
• Strong password enforcement programs.
• Business continuity and disaster recovery features.

Most companies include a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis in this section to outline the organization's current tech-related pros and cons. SWOT-based data is essential to mitigation prioritization and general decision-making throughout the IT strategy plan.

6. Upcoming IT Projects (Including a Tech Roadmap)

This section outlines specific strategies and actions the organization plans to take to achieve its desired IT state (and, by extension, support its overall business goals). Activities within this section must be:

• Measurable.
• Realistically achievable.
• Placed into the business context.
• Time-bound.
• Prioritized.

While there's no need for a detailed step-by-step guide to each project, all initiatives require the following information:

• A timeline for implementation (by quarter, month, or specific due date) and a release schedule.
• Important milestones.
• List of features, requirements, and dependencies.
• Cost predictions.
• Hosting location ( on-prem , cloud, at an MSP facility, etc.).
• Responsible stakeholders and go-to personnel.
• Expected results, benchmarks, and KPIs .
• Explanations on how users interact with the system (if applicable).

Most strategies have a tech roadmap in this section. A roadmap describes a high-level plan for getting from the current IT state to the desired one. Roadmaps detail what and when the team plans to deliver, helping stakeholders prioritize tasks and make correct trade-off decisions.

7. Resource Allocation

This section presents an in-depth analysis of the budget for all tech-related initiatives. Here are some of the most common expenses found in IT strategy plans:

• Storage costs (on-prem, off-prem, cloud storage, etc.).
• Prices of buying or leasing equipment.
• Software licensing costs.
• Hardware maintenance costs.
• IT and non-IT personnel wages.
• The price of outsourced experts and third-party teams.

This component of the plan also includes detailed instructions for allocating personnel and equipment.

Most IT strategy plans are concise, so you'll rarely run into a document with more than 10 to 15 pages. Occasionally, you'll also find a glossary section (especially in plans that discuss more complex technical terms and concepts).

How to Create an IT Strategy Plan?

Below is a step-by-step guide to creating an IT strategy plan from scratch. Most plans require several cycles of drafts and reviews, so expect to go back and forth through the list below when working on a new strategy.

Define Business Objectives

Start by outlining your company's short and long-term goals. Base your objectives on the following areas of business:

• Pain points.
• Sales pipeline and targets.
• Plans for upcoming partnerships, mergers, or acquisitions.
• Growth plans.
• Marketing goals.
• Up-and-coming products or features.
• Market changes.
• Demand forecasts.

Interview as many executives as possible when making a list of goals. Talking to individuals from different departments prevents misaligned and conflicting ideas and avenues. Consider interviewing the following personnel:

• Business unit leaders.
• IT leaders and management.
• IT architects.
• Financial analysts. 

You could also reach out to third parties for guidance. External advisors often have different expertise, market knowledge, and experiences than your in-house team.

Gather Governance and Security Info

Before you start making plans for IT improvements, collect all relevant governance and security info. Add the following details to the document:

• Rules on how teams evaluate, deploy, and manage new IT initiatives.
• Go-to stakeholders and team members.
• List of current cybersecurity and physical security measures.
• Compliance guides (if any).
• SWOT and PEST analysis.

This info is a decision-making cornerstone for the rest of the strategy—all upcoming IT projects and decisions must keep governance and security rules in mind.

Audit Your Current IT Capabilities

Perform an in-depth analysis of your hardware, software, and processes. Use charts and tables to provide an easily digestible picture of the current IT state, but try to offer a detailed overview of assets.

Reviewing your IT infrastructure gives an up-close look at what's working correctly and what areas could benefit from changes.

Figure Out IT's Role in Business Goals

Once you have a list of business objectives, determine how IT aligns with these goals by answering the following questions:

• What needs to change in our IT to meet set objectives?
• Is the current IT somehow hindering our business goals?
• How can we use IT to speed up projects or increase the likelihood of success?
• Will we have to make additions to our tech stack to meet some of the objectives?
• Would changes to our IT (whether small or significant) benefit our goals?
• Are our current tools and systems a good fit with where our business wants to go?
• Are there any new or emerging tech opportunities we could benefit from?

Then, analyze the gap between the current state and where you need your IT to be to meet business objectives.

In some rare cases, a business may find that business objectives do not require any updates to the current IT. However, most organizations discover they could benefit from a few changes—it's not uncommon to identify three or more projects that require attention.

Start Planning IT Improvements

Once you clearly understand the current IT and how it helps (or hinders) business goals, it's time to plan what changes you must make. Changes can be minor (e.g., adding a new server to scale horizontally or switching to another anti-malware tool) or major (e.g., revamping the entire key management strategy or moving to another primary hosting provider).

List all IT projects you plan to launch and prioritize them based on the following factors:

• Estimated cost.
• Complexity.

Remember that IT improvements must be realistic and well-defined. The goal of " using IT resources to make the company more competitive " does not provide a sound foundation for further planning. A few better examples of high-level goals are:

• Set up a cloud-based infrastructure capable of handling 10 million subscribers.
• Deploy a CDN to improve app performance in a specific region.
• Integrate two apps to enable 2x faster processing. 
• Redesign a legacy app into a cloud-native app running on Kubernetes .

This section is an ideal opportunity to assess whether the in-house team has the necessary know-how to create the desired IT state. If not, explain how you plan to outsource the required talent.

Avoid getting into too much technical debt when making IT improvements. If you must take shortcuts due to a tight schedule, always make clear plans on how the team will "pay" the debt back.

In-Depth Project Planning

Once you know what improvements you must make, it's time to define the scope of each project. Write down the following info for every initiative:

• Software and hardware choices and requirements.
• Go-to personnel.
• Timeframes and project milestones.
• Areas of the business impacted by the plan.
• Expected costs and future budget estimates.
• Dependencies.
• Key phases (implementation, integration, review, etc.).
• Associated risks.

This step is also when you define desired metrics for each initiative, such as:

• Latency-based and server response time metrics.
• Number of help desk calls.
• Optimal capacity usage.
• Budget goals.
• Customer satisfaction scores.
• Product lead time.

Consider creating a roadmap to make the plan more easily digestible and keep everyone on track. Once you outline per-project details, communicate the IT strategy plan with stakeholders and obtain buy-in from key decision-makers.

Most IT strategy plans are " WORN " (i.e., written once, read never). Ensure teams have bi-weekly meetings to go through the abovementioned steps and discuss potential changes to current strategies.

Make Your IT Work for You (and Not the Other Way Around)

When tech choices and business interests do not complement each other, IT projects become too siloed and unclear. This lack of direction drastically impacts the bottom line, so ensure your team always makes IT decisions within the context of broader company aspirations. Create an IT strategy plan and use the document to drive growth and efficiency throughout your company.

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9 tips for achieving IT service delivery excellence

The quest for it service excellence is never-ending. here are ways you can attain customer satisfaction without burning-out your team..

Service delivery excellence is an attribute that far too many IT leaders fail to prioritize. That’s unfortunate given how much of smooth business operations depends on the efficient delivery of IT services today.

IT service delivery enables an organization to give end users access to essential IT services by designing, developing, and deploying key technology resources, including applications and data. But is your organization doing all it can to ensure service delivery excellence? The following nine tips will help get your there.

1. Be proactive and serve with empathy

It cannot be stressed enough how important it is to be active in ensuring that all services delivered to end users are fully vetted and tested to the point where there’s no room for complaints. “Provide an IT service that focuses on user experience,” advises Edgar Padua, business value architect at digital workplace provider Nexthink.

One way to ensure smooth service delivery is to deploy tools aimed at detecting and proactively resolving issues. “Using this strategy, IT can prioritize their transformation roadmap without being stuck in the mire of reactive support processes,” which leads to support groups chasing and extinguishing fires, hampering essential business operations, Padua explains.

Follow-through is also vital, Padua says. Listen and be empathetic to the user’s situation before presenting — and enacting — the best possible solution. “In the end, all the user is concerned with is getting back to work and that their issue is resolved within a timely manner,” he observes. “An IT organization that collects sentiment and acts on actionable, constructive feedback will always have more users that are fans rather than detractors.”

2. Develop a structured service catalog and adapt

Achieving service delivery excellence is not a one-size-fits-all process. As disruptive technologies keep arriving, the path to excellence constantly shifts. “The key to providing top-tier service delivery is the integration of a skilled staff, streamlined operations and processes, and the use of innovative technologies,” says Marcus Cziomer, a senior vice president at cloud services firm Lemongrass.

Cziomer observes that the foundation for service delivery excellence lies in a well-structured service catalog. He notes that the catalog should present a clear definition of offerings as well as methods for delivery while ensuring that sales and delivery departments are consistently aligned. “With our team’s strong understanding of every service within our catalog, we can quickly adapt to client needs and optimize output for success,” Cziomer says.

3. Embrace metrics and iterate

To achieve maximum efficiency, Cziomer also suggests focusing service efforts on DevOps Research and Assessment (DORA) metrics, such as “lead time for change” and “time to restore service.” Customer-centric Net Promoter Scores are equally important, he adds.

“To dive deeper into understanding our services, I employ methods like value stream mapping to pinpoint bottlenecks or inefficiencies,” says Cziomer, who feels that proactive approaches such as these enable IT organizations to consistently elevate their service levels.

Cziomer also believes that achieving service excellence is an iterative process. “Once changes are implemented, it’s crucial to loop back, measure against the anticipated improvement, and continually review data.” By revisiting and fine-tuning methods, it becomes possible to achieve constant service progress and world-class quality, he says.

4. Standardize processes and understand LOB needs

Effective IT service delivery begins by creating and standardizing processes and documentation, says Patrick Cannon, field CTO at data center and cloud services firm US Signal. Standardization ensures a consistent end-user experience with outcomes that adhere to established security policies. “It’s also beneficial for effective training and new IT staff onboarding,” he says, adding that when IT understands the needs of each business unit, it opens the way to a more proactive service approach, reducing downtime and fostering innovation.

Cannon advises IT leaders to study and understand each department’s needs, and how they match the enterprise’s overall strategic goals. He notes that developing a services portfolio to leverage various cloud services can give IT a flexible operating model. “By separating the decision-making process from infrastructure, and aligning workloads with suitable cloud models, IT can redirect its focus toward ongoing business enhancement,” he explains.

5. Take a user-centric approach and assemble teams to fit

In addition to understanding business needs, IT service delivery excellence requires attention to user feedback with an eye toward constant improvement, says Steven Marcetic, a senior manager with Centric Consulting’s modern software delivery practice. “Adopt a user-centric approach when organizing your development/application delivery teams,” he recommends. “Establish product teams enabling independent end-to-end delivery of new features, applications, and services for all the various business streams.”

Marcetic believes that it’s important to have a well-trained team and to place the right people in strategic roles, particularly architects and product management experts. “Your leadership team should behave like a Scrum team, enabling end-to-end delivery and support.” Decisions, he advises, should focus on optimizing IT services in general and not only concentrate on locally optimized decisions.

“All of IT must know and be aligned with the organization’s goals,” Marcetic says. “This strategy places the end user — whether it’s an internal employee or an external customer — at the center of the decision-making process,” he explains. “Understanding customer needs and pain points makes IT service delivery more responsive and adaptive.”

The benefit of having a well-trained team speaks for itself, Marcetic notes. “A team that understands business needs and priorities is paramount to enabling your business,” he says.

6. Avoid ad hoc execution and document complaint resolutions

As with any business-critical activity, service delivery has to be planned in advance. “Ad hoc execution of services always leads to bad taste and attrition,” says Bhupendra Chopra, chief research officer at software engineering firm Kanerika. The completed plan should specify service delivery methods, expected results, resources allocated, and the team members responsible in the service delivery chain. “A clear standard operating procedure is a recipe for success.”

Always create and follow predefined plans, Chopra advises. Predictability and transparent, proactive updates are critical, and after addressing and resolving any complaints, follow a corrective and preventive action (CAPA) process to record the result for internal use and to share with customers. The final report should show how the correction was made and delivered should a similar issue occur at a future date.

7. Embrace continuous improvement and pursue root causes

Working toward continuous improvement leads to service excellence, claims Richard Ricks, CEO of MSP Silver Tree Consulting and Services. “IT leaders need a comprehensive plan to make their operation the best it can be.”

Ricks recommends conducting a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis. He also advises establishing defined service targets and using agile methods to ensure continuous improvements and developing an effective governance improvement plan.

Most IT organizations react quickly to customer complaints, but only address the top-level issue, Ricks says. “The underlying root cause is still open and, therefore, the issue is unresolved and will reappear,” he warns. “Until you address the root cause, you can never sustain IT service excellence.”

8. Prioritize customer satisfaction with a tested approach

The customer may not always be right, but it’s important to remember that service delivery begins and ends with a happy customer, says Craig Wilson, CEO of IT services firm Opinov8. “Focus your process, governance and, ultimately, your quality of service and delivery as the bedrock of that philosophy,” he suggests. “Have a service delivery model that’s predictable and consistent.”

Resist the temptation to simply throw resources at a problem — a dubious and expensive approach for any service provider. Instead, build rails to guide service delivery within specific situations, Wilson advises. It’s important to have a tested approach that starts each engagement in the same way with predictable results. “Once you’re confident in the approach, it’s easier to focus on the actual client requirement and not waste time double-checking data or processes,” he explains.

9. Address specific needs and adhere to a priority framework

Business stakeholders have many different needs, often requiring unique support levels. Unfortunately, many IT leaders end up spreading their attention equally across all delivery areas. Such an approach can force business needs into limited delivery priority frameworks, warns Ola Chowning, a partner with technology research advisory firm ISG. A one-size-fits all outlook often results in relatively minor issues being addressed at the same priority level as problems that impact major business objectives.

Chowning stresses the importance of ensuring that the service priority framework has been clearly outlined and that exact value levels are established in cooperation with the business stakeholders themselves. “This approach allows the business to make decisions based on outcomes rather than focusing on cost, and for IT to defend service delivery priority more effectively.”

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John Edwards is a veteran business technology journalist. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and numerous business and technology publications.

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Home > Business > Business Startup

• 5 Best Business Plan Software and Tools in 2023 for Your Small Business

Data as of 3 /13/23 . Offers and availability may vary by location and are subject to change.

We are committed to sharing unbiased reviews. Some of the links on our site are from our partners who compensate us. Read our editorial guidelines and advertising disclosure .

A business plan can do a lot for your business. It can help you secure investors or other funding. It can give your company direction. It can keep your finances healthy. But, if we’re being honest, it can also be a pain to write.

Luckily, you don’t have to start from scratch or go it alone. Business plan software and services can help you craft a professional business plan, like our top choice LivePlan , which provides templates, guidance, and more.

You’ve got quite a few choices for business plan help, so we’re here to help you narrow things down. Let’s talk about the best business plan tools out there.

• LivePlan : Best overall
• BizPlanBuilder : Most user-friendly
• Wise Business Plans : Best professional service
• Business Sorter : Best for internal plans
• GoSmallBiz.com : Most extra features
• Honorable mentions

Business plan software 101

The takeaway, business plan software faq, compare the best business plan software.

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LivePlan: Best overall business plan software

Data as of 3 /13/23 . Offers and availability may vary by location and are subject to change. *With annual billing

LivePlan has been our favorite business plan software for a while now, despite the stiff competition.

There’s a lot to like about LivePlan. It has pretty much all the features you could want from your business plan software. LivePlan gives you step-by-step instructions for writing your plan, helps you create financial reports, lets you compare your business’s actual financials to your plan’s goals, and much more. And if you ever need inspiration, it includes hundreds of sample business plans that can guide your writing.

LivePlan software pricing

But the best part? You get all that (and more) at a very competitive price. (You can choose from annual, six-month, or monthly billing.) While LivePlan isn’t quite the cheapest business plan builder out there, it’s not too far off either. And if comes with a 60-day money back guarantee. So there’s no risk in trying LivePlan out for yourself.

With a great balance of features and cost, LivePlan offers the best business plan solution for most businesses.

BizPlanBuilder: Most user-friendly

Need something easy to use? BizPlanBuilder fits the bill.

BizPlanBuilder doesn’t have a flashy, modern user interface―but it does have a very clear, intuitive one. You’ll be able to see your plan’s overall structure at a glance, so you can quickly navigate from your title page to your market trend section to that paragraph on your core values. And as you write, you’ll use a text editor that looks a whole lot like the word processing programs you’re already familiar with.

BizPlanBuilder software pricing

Data effective 3/13/23. At publishing time, amounts, rates, and requirements are current but are subject to change. Offers may not be available in all areas.

BizPlanBuilder also offers lots of helpful guidance for actually writing your plan. It gives you pre-written text, in which you just have to fill in relevant details. It offers explanations for what information you need to include in each section of your plan and way. It even gives you helpful tips from experts, so you’ll have all the information you need to plan like a pro.

So if you want planning software with almost no learning curve, you’ll like BizPlanBuilder.

Wise Business Plans: Best professional service

• Custom quote

Unlike all the other companies on this list, Wise Business Plans doesn’t offer software. Instead, it offers professional business plan writing services―meaning someone does all the hard work for you.

Now, you might think that sounds expensive―and you’re probably right (you have to request a custom quote for your plan). But there’s a lot to be said for expertise, and Wise Business Plans has plenty of that. Your business plan will get written by an experienced writer (with an MBA, no less). They’ll get information from you, do their own research, and then write your plan. You get one free revision, and you can always pay for more.  

Wise Business Plans service pricing

Your end result will be a polished, entirely original business plan. (You can even get printed copies.) And best of all, you won’t have to spend your precious time working on the plan yourself. Wise Business Plans takes care of all the hard parts, and makes your business look good while doing it. Sounds like a service worth paying for, right?

Put simply, if you want the most professional business plan possible, we recommend using Wise Business Plans’s writing service.

Business Sorter: Best for internal plans

Many businesses need plans to show to people outside the company (to get financing, for example). But what if you just need a plan for internal use? In that case, we suggest Business Sorter.

Business Sorter uses a unique card-based method to help you craft the perfect business plan. (You can watch a demo video to see how it works.) You’ll plan some of the usual things, like finances and marketing. But Business Sorter also lets you make plans for specific teams and team members. It also emphasizes more internal matters, like operations, that might get overlooked in a business plan for outsiders.

Business Sorter software pricing

After you’ve made your business plan, Business Sorter also helps you stay accountable to it. You can create tasks, give them deadlines, and assign them to team members―giving you basic project management tools to make sure your business plans become business actions. (Oh, and did we mention that Business Sorter has the lowest starting prices of any software on this list?)

It all adds up to a business plan software that works great for internal planning.

GoSmallBiz: Most extra features

Want to get way more than just business planning software? Then you probably want GoSmallBiz.

See, GoSmallBiz offers business plan software as part of its service―but it’s just one part of a much bigger whole. You also get everything from discounts on legal services to a website builder to a CRM (customer relationship manager) to business document templates. And more. In other words, you get just about everything you need to get your startup off the ground.

GoSmallBiz software pricing

Don’t worry though―you still get all the business planning help you need. GoSmallBiz gives you business plan templates, step-by-step instructions, and the ability to create financial projections. And if you get stuck, GoSmallBiz will put you in touch with experts who can offer advice.

If you want business planning and much, much more, give GoSmallBiz a try.

• PlanGuru : Best financial forecasting
• EnLoop : Cheapest tool for startups

We recommend the software above for most business planning needs. Some businesses, though, might be interested in these more specialized planning software.

Honorable mention software pricing

PlanGuru: Best financial forecasting features

PlanGuru is pretty pricey compared to our other picks, but you might find its forecasting features worth paying for. It has more forecasting methods than other software (over 20) plus it lets you forecast up to 10 years.

EnLoop: Cheapest tool for startups

EnLoop doesn’t have our favorite features or interface, but it does have really, really low pricing plus a seven-day free trial. It's the most affordable software for startup business planning and still provides all the essential features like financial analysis, team collaboration, charting, and more.

Data as of 3 /13/23 . Offers and availability may vary by location and are subject to change. * With annual billing

Several of our previous favorite planning software, including BusinessPlanPro and StratPad, seem to have gone out of business.

A business plan is a written, living document that tells the story of your business and what you plan to do with it. It serves as the source of truth for you—the business owner—as well as potential partners, employees, and investors, but it also serves as a roadmap of what you want your business to be.

Why you need a business plan

While some small-business owners don’t see the point of creating a formal business plan, it can have some concrete benefits for your business. For example, one 2016 study found that business owners with written plans are more successful than those that don’t. 1

Still too vague? Then let’s get specific.

If you ever seek business funding (from, say, banks, angel investors , or venture capitalists ), you’ll have to prove that your business deserves the money you want. A formal business plan―complete with financial data and projections―gives you a professional document you can use to make your case. (In fact, most potential investors will expect you to have a business plan ready.)

Even if you’re not seeking funding right now, a business plan can help your business. A formal plan can guide your business’s direction and decision making. It can keep your business accountable (by, for example, seeing if your business meets the financial projections you included). And a formal plan offers a great way to make sure your team stays on the same page.

What to include in your business plan

Not all business plans are created equal. To make a really useful business plan, you’ll want to include a number of elements:

• Basic information about your business
• Your products/services
• Market and industry analysis
• What makes your business competitive
• Strategies and upcoming plans
• Your team (and your team’s background)
• Current financial status
• Financial and market projections
• Executive summary

Of course, you can include more or fewer elements―whatever makes sense for your business. Just make sure your business plan is comprehensive (but not overwhelming).

How business plan software can help

With so many elements to include, business plan creation can take a while. Business plan software tries to speed things up.

Most business plan software will include prompts for each section. In some cases, you can just fill in your business’s specific information, and the software will write the text for you. In other cases, the software will give you specific guidance and examples, helping you write the text yourself.

Plus, business plan software can help you stay organized. You’ll usually get intuitive menus that let you quickly flip through sections. So rather than endlessly scrolling through a long document in a word processor, you can quickly find your way around your plan. Some software even lets you drag and drop sections to reorganize your plan.

Sounds way easier than just staring at a blank page and trying to start from scratch, right?

Choosing business plan software

To find the right business plan builder for your business, you’ll want to compare features. For example, would you rather write your own text, getting prompts and advice from your software? Or would you rather go with a fill-in-the-blank method?

Likewise, think about the elements you need. If your plan will have a heavy focus on finances, you’ll want to choose business plan software with robust financial projection features. If you care more about market and competitor analysis, look for software that can help with that research.

You may also want to find business plan software that integrates with your business accounting software . Some plan builders will import data from Xero, QuickBooks, etc. to quickly generate your financial data and projections.

And of course, you’ll want to compare prices. After all, you always want to end up with software that fits your business budget.

The right business plan software can make your life easier. With LivePlan ’s wide breadth of features and online learning tools, you can’t go wrong. Plus, BizPlanBuilder 's one-time pricing makes it easy to invest while Business Sorter has a low starting cost. And if you're business is looking to grow, GoSmallBiz and Wise Business Plans will scale with you.

But of course, different companies have different needs. So shop around until you find the software that’s best for you and your business.

Now that you've got a business plan, take a look at our checklist for starting a small business.  It can help you make sure you have everything else you need to get your startup off to a good start!

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Creating a business plan can take anywhere from a couple hours to several weeks. Your timeline will depend on things like the elements you choose to include, whether you use software or hire a writing service, and how much research goes into your plan.

That said, much of the business plan software out there brags that it can help you create a fairly detailed plan in a few hours. So if you’re going the software route, that can help you set your expectations.

If you want to get the most out of your business plan, you should update it on a regular basis―at least annually. That way, you can continually refer to it to inform your company’s strategies and direction.  

At the very least, you should update your business plan before you start looking for a new round of funding (whether that’s with investors or lenders).

Thanks to business plan software, you can easily write your own business plan rather than pay someone to do it for you. And in most cases, software will cost you less than a professional business plan service.

There are some times you might want to go with a service though. If time is tight, you might find that it’s worth the cost of a service. Or if you’ve got big investor meetings on the horizon, you might want the expertise and polish that a professional service can offer.

Ultimately, you’ll have to decide for yourself whether business plan software or a business plan service will work better for your company.

Methodology

We ranked business plan software and tools based on features, pricing and plans, and connections to project management and other services. The value of each plan and service, along with what it offers, was a big consideration in our rankings, and we looked to see if what was offered was useful to small businesses or just extra. The final thing we looked at was the ease of use of the software to see if it's too complex for small businesses.

At Business.org, our research is meant to offer general product and service recommendations. We don't guarantee that our suggestions will work best for each individual or business, so consider your unique needs when choosing products and services.

Sources 1. Harvard Business Review, “ Research: Writing a Business Plan Makes Your Startup More Likely to Succeed .” Accessed March 13, 2023.

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• Business applications

Define a software delivery strategy for business innovation – four key steps

As software takes a central role in modern business models, application delivery capability has become the key enabler of disruption.

• Diego Lo Giudice and Kurt Bittner

As software takes a central role in modern business models, application delivery capability has become the key enabler of disruption. 

Long-term planning and long application delivery cycles cannot provide the responsiveness needed to transform customer experience, embrace the mobile mind shift and leverage opportunities of cloud and big data. Seizing these opportunities requires modern application delivery capabilities.

Customers have never had more competition for their attention; brand loyalties quickly drown in the flood of attractive alternatives. In a world dominated by software, products are more dynamic, change is continuous and more frequent, and shorter delivery cycles have become commonplace. 

The clock is ticking, and customers are determining its speed. 

Blockbuster thought it had more time to work out its new business model, but by the time it started executing on it, it was too late. The race is on, and the fastest competitors will win.

Speed, yes, but with high quality

Customers tell us in most of our daily interactions that speed is the most important business driver , but expectations for quality are high – faster delivery is of little value if the quality is low. 

Delivering better software faster means accelerating the performance of software delivery teams. There are some companies that can rip the sticking plaster off and discard their old waterfall ways, but not many. 

So what's the best way to develop a strategy to improve delivery ? There is no one prescribed recipe. Strategies depend on various factors, including leadership vision, cultural context, business domain, level of disruption and customer obsession and existing delivery capabilities.

But there are some key aspects successful application development and delivery leaders execute on, and various industry thought leaders agree to, on how lean and agile can successfully help transform businesses, address cultural change, lead with dynamism and courage, and to build-measure-learn.

From an operational perspective, enterprise application delivery teams' transformation strategies need to set a continuous improvement plan with these four steps: 

• Identify improvement opportunities
• Implement change
• Deliver results
• Measure impact

Step 1: Identify improvement opportunities

Before initiating the journey, make sure everyone in the organisation knows and is internalising lean principles and values. 

Usually 30% of the workforce in an organisation will be open to embrace change – use tactics to involve them, because they will become the change agents. In the Royal Philips global transformation, the CEO Frans Van Houten chose to empower his executives and management to enable change throughout the organisation. 

To help identify improvement opportunities in a pragmatic way, enterprise application delivery teams could, for example, adopt a lean visual analysis approach to eliminate waste and focus on value . 

A picture is worth a thousand words. Visually highlighting and exposing what barriers to faster delivery exist in a process reminds everyone of what needs to be fixed urgently. 

An underused but very effective visual approach for this is value stream mapping (VSM). It's a customer-driven approach to identifying and resolving disconnects, redundancies and gaps in how work is carried in teams and across teams to deliver customer outcomes.   

Step 2: Implement change

You now have a plan to remove the most important obstacles, but also a pragmatic practice for identifying obstacles that you can repeat and improve. 

No transformation can happen before there is evident focus on change management. If change is not happening, you risk fixing issues and removing obstacles that will soon reappear because peoples' behaviour has not changed.

Include change activities in the improvement plans, including modernising mindset and behaviour. It's behaviour that produces results. Behavioural change has to happen throughout the entire organisation and, in most cases, leaders will need to drive by example. 

You need to evolve people's mindset to one where learning and experimentation become part of their everyday job. 

Step 3: Deliver results

A completed VSM will record for each process step: process time or touch time, which is the time it takes to complete the work; lead time or throughput, which is the elapsed time it takes for work to be completed from when it is available to when it is finished; and percent complete and accurate, which measures the quality of the work at that step. The target state VSMs will show the corresponding improvements in each of these metrics. Now it's time for the action.

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Step 4: Measure impact

Metrics can be the perfect tool to track what's working and what's not, both at the business concept or value stream level, and at the detailed transformation subsegment level. 

However, metrics should be defined and used to focus and initiate the right conversations or analysis in the right areas that prove to be problematic, so that corrective actions can be taken. Focus some metrics to help understand if value is being delivered to the business and link that back to reprioritise the improvement efforts.

It’s the business that will drive the delivery strategy approach

The strategy for a transformation to continuous delivery will largely depend on the business context your enterprise will be living through the next 10 years. Understand what rate of change the business will need as it gets deeper into the age of the customer. 

Additionally, a large and global corporation will have diverse rates of change by division or by country. In that case, the best strategy might be to adapt capabilities to the fastest-paced one.

Diego Lo Giudice is vice-president and principal analyst and Kurt Bittner is principal analyst at Forrester Research where they serve the information needs of and contribute to the Forrester blog for application development and delivery professionals.

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How to plan an IT strategy in 5 steps

Article by The Final Step on Mar 23, 2022

Taking advantage of new technology and getting the most from existing IT investments isn’t easy

Goldsmiths University classifies 46% of UK organisations as “endangered” because their failure to adopt IT to their competitive advantage makes them less likely to survive, let alone thrive.

One example of this is how we use passwords. Good technical tools are available for password management, yet our behaviour around passwords remains poor. Poor adoption of this technology  creates unnecessary risks for businesses.

Whether you’re new to the process or a seasoned IT manager, knowing just where to start when you plan an IT strategy can be difficult. That’s why we’ve put together this IT strategy template of five simple steps you can use to plan an IT strategy:

1. IT Strategy: Outline your business goals and high-level objectives

The primary function of your IT strategy planning is to   support your business needs .

In the initial stages of planning, start by outlining your business   needs ,   goals   and high-level   objectives . If you don’t have an overarching business strategy you can clarify your mission and needs by looking at your:

• Sales pipeline and targets
• Plans for any upcoming partnerships, mergers or acquisitions
• Growth plans
• Any other ‘action plans’ that your teams might be working towards

The importance of this step cannot be overstated.   The most successful organisations   align their IT planning and strategy with their business strategy   to make   both   a success. Accounting firms, for example, are   embracing new technologies   to support new business practices needs, while the   UK government   is placing innovation and scalability at the heart of its strategy to support the development of digital public services.

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2. it strategy: define your scope, stakeholders and schedule.

A   list of goals is not a strategy   so the next step is to define your scope, stakeholders and schedule.

It’s important that everyone is clear about the purpose of your business IT strategy, who is responsible for delivering it and to whom it applies. Your IT strategy shouldn’t (and can’t)   solve all your problems   at once, so even if your strategy is company-wide you need to articulate how it affects different business units and functions.

This is where defining your stakeholders becomes important.   Be consultative   and meet with key people in your business units who will be able to tell you how they’re using technology, what their plans are for next year and how IT can support them.

It’s also important to put a lifespan on your IT strategy. Most IT strategies are long-term, but you might want to review and redefine your strategy more frequently. Find some good IT strategy examples. define the key phases – implementation, integration, review, etc – and know when the strategy will activate, and when it will need to be revised.

Having a clearly defined IT strategy plan, scope, schedule and list of stakeholders will be useful in coming up with a ‘roadmap’ for implementing your strategy.

3. IT Strategy: Review your existing infrastructure

When you plan an IT strategy it’s important to remember that you’re not reinventing the wheel.

Reviewing your   existing IT infrastructure   will help you   define problems , see what’s working and where resources can best be saved by making use of what is already available. As you start thinking about your IT, ask yourself:

• How are teams and departments using technology? What tools, software or systems do they use?   Your answers should be in the information you’ve collected from various teams and units within your business.
• What’s working? What isn’t?   Think critically about how IT is being used and analyse which tools, software and systems are providing the most value.

By thinking critically about your current infrastructure you’ll be able to plan an IT strategy based on resources you already have. You’ll identify opportunities to save money and time that you would otherwise spend on implementing an entirely new infrastructure or   switching IT providers .

4. IT Strategy: Create a roadmap for resource allocation and architecture

This might seem like the most difficult step, but if you’ve been following the right process then resource allocation will be relatively easy.

Start by defining an overall   technology architecture, which is made up of the major software, hardware and other tools you’ll be using. Then consider any department-specific technology that might be required to meet business goals, like specialist financial or HR software. Lastly, think about how the parts in your architecture fit together, and what processes will govern their integration.

Keep all this information in a common spreadsheet or other documents that gives clear visibility into your architecture, how much you’re spending and who will be using it. There are IT Strategy templates to help with this step if you don’t want to build your own.

5. IT Strategy: Define your metrics

Since your IT strategy is supporting your business needs, you need to make sure that it is functional and cost effective. You can’t be losing money on something designed to advance your business!

This is why it’s important to identify some   key metrics and KPIs   that you can use to benchmark and analyse the performance of your IT strategy over time. These might include:

• Service level indicators, like the number of help desk calls
• Operational indicators, such as capacity utilisation
• Business-level indicators, like budget and customer satisfaction
• Qualitative indicators, like end-user and customer feedback

When done right, an IT strategy can be a powerful tool to drive growth and efficiency in your business, supporting your goals and your staff directly. With these five steps in our IT Strategy example, you’ll be able to plan an IT strategy that does just that.

Step Securely

Since we first wrote this article the IT environment has changed considerably, but the 5 Step approach above still holds true.

It’s crucial to add, though, one key area – Cyber Security. Data protection law requires businesses to take action on privacy and security by default and design. In other words, all technical changes should be considered from a compliance and security point of view.

Additionally, criminal activity is more frequent and sophisticated. So it’s vital to assess and mitigate your biggest risks and have a plan for when there is a problem. Security should be a separate line item in your budget and on your roadmap.

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Information technology operations—more commonly referred to as IT operations or ITOps—is the process of implementing, managing, delivering and supporting IT services to meet the business needs of internal and external users.

ITOps is the core function of the IT department, which usually reports to the chief information officer. It is one of the four functions (along with technical management, application management and service desk management) defined in the  IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) , the de facto industry standard best-practices framework for IT service management. 

ITOps is at the forefront of IT service delivery, one of the most important cogs in the machinery that keeps an organization running. Businesses and their customers have become so reliant on instant access to IT services—data, software applications,  public cloud  and  private cloud  resources—that even a small interruption to these services can have far-reaching and costly consequences.

In recent years, ITOps tasks have been increasingly taken on by AI software, forming a new sub-field of IT operations called AI operations, referred to as  AIOps .

AI capabilities such as natural language processing (NLP) and  machine learning (ML)  models are being used to automate ITOps tasks like collecting and aggregating huge volumes of data, separating and prioritizing significant event alerts from the noise of IT operations data, and correlating data to identify root causes and propose solutions.

Go deeper in your learning about observability, understanding its importance and its difference between monitoring and APM.

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Whether it’s the financial industry, telecommunications or retail, today’s businesses and their customers rely on immediate access to applications and expect seamless customer experiences. This requires optimal performance from applications and the supporting IT resources that the applications run on, such as  public cloud  and  private cloud  infrastructure, data, networks and services. Even a brief IT outage can have a significant impact on business operations and quickly become costly. The primary role of IT operations is to ensure the smooth performance of IT and business technologies so that business operations can proceed uninterrupted.

The responsibilities of ITOps include:

• Managing resources:  ITOps keeps IT infrastructure running. This includes hardware, software and networking infrastructure, as well as the apps that run on them. ITOps teams are responsible for managing and provisioning IT infrastructure resources for  DevOps  teams and maintaining service delivery and operation for customers and partners. This includes administering private, public and hybrid cloud environments, data center locations and equipment, operating systems, internet connectivity, firewalls and network security and other IT infrastructure components.
• Optimizing IT infrastructure:  ITOps also looks for ways to improve infrastructure and performance while safely reducing cost. To do so, teams document hardware configurations and implement configurations that ensure optimal performance, as well as manage IT workloads, implement software, hardware and operating system upgrades, and assess the impact of proposed infrastructure changes.
• Ensuring application performance:  ITOps plays a critical role in collaborating with line-of-business owners and application owners to ensure application performance. ITOps often assembles a recommendation of resourcing decisions for application owners to make sure that applications receive the compute, storage and network they require to prevent slowdowns and outages.
• Service desk support:  Although the service desk is its own subset of the IT department in some organizations, support in others is handled by ITOps. Managing the help desk and ticketing system, troubleshooting issues and addressing the root cause of IT-related problems all fall under this support umbrella.
• Incident and security management:  ITOps not only focuses on the day-to-day availability of IT services, but also develops plans for safeguarding future availability should problems arise. This includes performing data backups, restoring systems after an outage, developing a disaster recovery plan, establishing metrics for evaluating performance, auditing and working on regulatory compliance.

ITOps is often confused with  IT operations management  (ITOM) since both are closely involved in keeping IT services up and running. While ITOps refers to the people, roles and tasks related to IT service management, ITOM refers to the management processes and tools used to maintain the technology components, computing requirements and business processes companies use each day. ITOps teams oversee the services within the IT environment as well as the availability of all resources and IT applications, whether this is in day-to-day tasks or longer-term strategic planning. ITOM, a subset of ITOps, comprises the routine processes that ensure the overall quality, efficiency and user experience of IT resource delivery and the tools used to accomplish this goal.

DevOps aims to speed the delivery of higher-quality software by automating and integrating the efforts of development and IT operations teams. By linking these previously siloed units, organizations can build a software development and delivery process with continuous communication, collaboration and shared responsibility. The result is faster workflows and streamlined processes that meet software users’ ever-increasing demand for frequent, innovative new features and uninterrupted performance and availability.

In the DevOps model, IT teams support the software development and testing process by providing configuration, installation and troubleshooting support, database management and network infrastructure management. They also ensure that the infrastructure is meeting the needs of the development team. One way this is accomplished is by using Application Resource Management tools to guarantee applications have the resources they need, when they need it.

Throughout the DevOps lifecycle, both IT and development teams work to identify dependencies and test for issues, often by using automation. DevOps and ITOps use  Application Performance Monitoring (APM)  and  observability  tools to automatically analyze the root cause of issues and receive immediate feedback at each step of the software delivery pipeline when deploying new code or making changes to the system. This collaboration allows continuous delivery and deployment pipelines to flow smoothly and efficiently, enabling faster time to market for new applications and enhancements.

AIOps  is the application of AI capabilities, such as NLP and machine learning models, to automate and streamline operational workflows. AIOps not only creates opportunities for automation and efficiency, but also directly addresses a significant challenge facing IT teams today. IT infrastructure components, applications and performance monitoring tools generate huge volumes of IT operations data—volumes that increase rapidly as organizations undertake  digital transformation  and adopt  cloud computing  services and hybrid cloud environments. Gartner estimates that the average enterprise IT infrastructure generates two to three times more IT operations data every year.

To better manage and leverage this data, IT operations teams are relying less on domain-based IT management tools and manual monitoring and intervention, and turning increasingly to data-driven, AI-powered automation.

AIOps enables IT operations teams to be more agile and responsive by helping to:

• Collect and aggregate huge volumes of both structured and unstructured data generated by multiple IT infrastructure components, applications, performance-monitoring tools and service ticketing systems
• Use automatic baselining to detect anomalies, moving users away from rules-based systems, toward dynamic, easy-to-use AI and ML systems
• Reduce ticket volume, group events and anomalies, and separate and prioritize significant event alerts from surrounding IT operations data
• Deliver the analyzed context of incidents, stitched across the full enterprise estate
• Correlate historical and real-time data to identify root causes of problems and propose solutions
• Automate labor-intensive IT processes and proactively mitigate high impact triggers
• Develop insights quickly with pre-trained models that accelerate time-to-value
• Improve mean time to detection and mean time to resolution through enhanced visibility and automated incident management and response
• Create operational efficiency and safely reduce IT cost by driving dynamic resourcing automation to meet real-time demands with zero waste
• Build a library of automation policies that further reduces manual management and processes

Continuously automate critical actions in real time—and without human intervention—that proactively deliver the most efficient use of compute, storage and network resources to your apps at every layer of the stack.

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Explore the benefits of a cloud cost management and optimization solution for greater business value.

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14 Crucial Components of Business IT Strategic Planning

As they grow, many companies find it very beneficial to have their own IT department. IT planning becomes just as important as creating a financial plan or budget forecasting. Adequate IT planning takes time, but this process allows all department resources to be productively utilized. With a strong IT strategy, the company will more effectively achieve its business goals, prevent a number of internal problems, and even reduce the cost of maintaining hardware and other components. You definitely need to take care of IT planning if you want to use company funds more efficiently, increase profits, optimize resources, and improve overall productivity.

A man who does not plan long ahead will find trouble at his door. – Confucius

What Is an IT Strategic Business Plan

An IT strategic plan is a dynamic document that describes complex procedures and processes for managing a business based on existing technologies. By using such a plan, top management can make a number of decisions regarding the IT direction of the company, including setting goals and priorities. In general, the IT business planning process helps in creating an overall company strategy. It should include those IT areas in which you can contribute and gain a competitive advantage.

Waze is an excellent example of a sound IT strategy and planning . This application was created in 2006 by an Israeli developer Ehud Shabtai and reflected the map of Israel for use in GPS technology. It would seem that there were a lot of similar applications. Still, the company focused on its IT strategy, and already in 2011 released an update that showed the congestion of routes, traffic incidents on the map, rallies, and laid the most effective course for users, taking into account the traffic situation. Waze quickly gained popularity due to its convenient function, and in 2013 it was purchased by Google for $1.1 billion .  

In 2020-2021 , IT planning is more critical than ever. Given the rapid development of information technology and its impact on business, each organization must clearly understand its strategic goal and how the technical area is moving.

What a Strategic IT Plan is Not

It is imperative to understand what a strategic plan is and not confuse it with a tactical one. Otherwise, it will fail. An Information Technology strategic plan is the framework from which executives decide to meet the overall business strategy. It is a key point for business development . A tactical plan , which guides what needs to be done to achieve a goal, is still not a strategic plan.

Another remarkable nuance is that a strategic plan is not a static document. We said earlier that it is dynamic, which means that it must be revised and updated per the company’s needs. You cannot just create it once and then follow it all the time. Ideally, you should revise and modify a 5-year IT strategy plan annually.

What Components an IT Plan Should Cover

It is a mistake to think that IT plans only cover software and hardware resources. In fact, it is much wider. A strong document should contain the following aspects:

Alignment with business strategy and objectives. The IT strategy must support the business strategy, and this is what the IT plan reflects. It is worth highlighting those business strategies that require significant investments in IT infrastructure or related aspects.

Long-term initiatives. Long-term perspectives take from 3 to 5 years to reach and should also be reflected in the plan. Long-term prospects must also be consistent with the goals and direction of the company. For example, if we are talking about creating a custom application, then the company can build development from scratch or expand the current one. Another option when resources are limited is to hire a third-party company for custom software development .

Best practices. It is one of the factors influencing the success of a company in compliance with advanced technologies. The IT plan should clearly define the company’s new practices and a program for its implementation. It takes time, namely training of personnel, and requires the purchase of appropriate software or equipment, and so on. Nevertheless, this is an important point that affects the competitiveness of a business.

IT governance. This section identifies IT management issues and describes how to improve them. Good governance is directly related to how a company creates, evaluates, implements, and manages new initiatives and best practices.

IT service catalog. The company must implement a service catalog that will support the business and help it grow. These can be additional services that are not related to the central IT product but aimed at improving the organization's performance; for example, a company will decide to move towards SaaS development services . Besides, this section should also cover any problems that exist in the current IT service catalog and ways to fix them.

Ways of communication. Any business needs to have established ways of communicating with clients to demonstrate the transparency of its services. Good communication increases the level of trust in the organization. Thus, another part of the IT plan is how to inform customers about the services provided and their implementation.

IT principles, metrics, and financials. In order to see the performance, a business evaluates its indicators. This section should answer questions such as: What are the guidelines for IT? What are the key metrics that represent business performance? How does a company measure its success? Which budget model to use? By and large, this part should be interconnected with the overall financial model of the company .

Holistic design. The next component contains the design principles that must be followed in every IT project for successful delivery and an overall testing strategy.

Human capital management. Any human resource is an asset that needs to be well-managed to achieve maximum productivity. The plan should describe the strategy for managing human resources with the help of technologies, equipment, or related applications.

Enterprise risk management . Any business can face situations that negatively affect development and profit. Thus, the workable plan should contain a forecast of adverse events and specific steps to prevent them or reduce their impact to a minimum and measures to secure the company.

Cost management. The next component is the description of cost management. In general, in any company, this is an extensive section. An IT plan describes how a company can manage costs and how they depend on hardware or software.

Technology management. The next equally important part describes how the company maintains, updates, and manages technology, databases, networks, and IT security services and creates a contingency plan, manages appropriate documents, etc.

Hardware and software management. This section describes how the company will maintain and update software and hardware, specifications, licenses, configurations, etc. Quite often, this part of the plan overlaps with the previous section.

Vendor management. In the next part, you need to identify and manage the activities of third-party providers that affect the IT department. This includes complying with various kinds of agreements, as well as managing day-to-day activities.

Need a professional IT team to benefit your business? Hire KeyUA experts with 12+ years of experience developing sophisticated products.

Why Do You Need the IT Plan

Every organization that is interested in their business growth and gaining a competitive advantage should take care of creating an IT plan. It can significantly increase productivity and achieve important business goals. Companies that do not have an IT plan or do not update their plan regularly are exposed to high risks and poor business processes. Here are some other reasons for developing an IT strategic plan:

You can avoid such unpleasant situations as data theft, negative consequences of hacker attacks, viruses. Outdated technology is what will make your company vulnerable and what could sink it. An IT plan will help you develop accurate and actionable methods to secure your business from outside interference.

Increase in productivity based on reducing the time required to respond to problems associated with internal software or hardware, IT products developed by the company, etc.

Efficient use of resources. An IT plan will help you qualitatively manage the business’s internal components, including human resources and equipment, taking into account the company’s needs. In turn, this will lead to the minimization of the costs and risks associated with incompetent management. Basically, if you want your staff and your hardware to be the best, you need an IT plan.

Receiving additional investments. Lenders, investors, and other financial institutions will be more likely to provide you with additional financing if you have a clear and well thought out strategic IT plan that matches the organization’s real-time needs. From an investment point of view, a good IT plan increases the opportunities for making a profit.

You can easily find alternative and more cost-effective hardware options on the market. Good planning helps you avoid cost overruns and find the best solution.

Always be prepared for unforeseen circumstances. Yes, a strategic plan allows you to cope with negative changes for which the company was not ready and to minimize their consequences.

A strategic plan is an opportunity to look into the future and determine the most effective ways of business development. Let's take a look at the competition between Netflix and Blockbuster video. Blockbuster had over 9,000 stores in various countries at its peak, including over 4,000 in the United States. Netflix began its activity as the world's first online DVD rental shop. But in 2007, the company looked ahead and predicted that video streaming would be the right direction for its business. And what is now? More than 139 million users worldwide purchase Netflix subscriptions, and the company generates $6.148B in revenue per quarter . In 2013, Blockbuster closed its last store. This is a prime example of how important it is to have a strategic plan focused on future trends .

The 6 Stages of the IT Strategic Planning Process

Now we know that an IT plan is an important document for business development, supporting the company’s overall expansion strategy. Now let's look at the main steps on how to develop an IT strategy plan.

1. Planning process overview

This stage shows where the company as a whole should move. Senior management defines the mission and long-term prospects of the IT direction. In the beginning, these statements should show how the plan relates to the overall business strategy.

2. Long-term vision of the company

At this stage, the assets and resources of the company are defined. This is where human capital and technical capabilities are handled. It is equally important to make a market forecast and identify future technology trends and goals that the company will achieve.

3. Identifying current problems

You should study the current state of all systems and processes in the IT direction, find bottlenecks, and understand how this affects the business. For all identified problems, an effective solution must be found.

4. Schedules and budget

This stage includes building a roadmap, budgeting, prioritization, as well as ways to obtain investment.

5. Process of strategic IT planning

Based on the data analysis and the problems identified, the company must make a number of important decisions. This includes staff training, selection of the best suppliers, equipment procurement, IT infrastructure setup, and so on.

6. Benchmarking

The company must track its progress and how it managed or failed to achieve its goals. At the last stage of the planning process, it is worth comparing the company's results with the goals from previous plans and understanding whether they were achieved. If the organization has not reached the intended purposes in the previous period, it is worth assessing if they are still relevant and developing steps to realize them.

Example from the Government of Canada Information Technology Strategic Plan 2016-2020

A Couple of Basic Nuances to Focus On

Several aspects do not seem so significant, but they should definitely be focused on during the preparation of the IT Plan. As in most areas of business, IT is a team effort, and often even the smallest companies have several dedicated professionals. Ideally, the IT department comprises various experts in software development, infrastructure customization, data protection, and so on. But not all companies can afford such a staff, so they make the mistake of dumping all responsibility on one IT specialist. Even if the company’s department is small, you need to ensure that its roles are correctly assigned, and the internal structure is efficient. At first glance, it might seem like a confusing waste of time. But the wrong structure and distribution of responsibility will lead to the most failure of the entire department. Take care of it even if you hire remote specialists.

Process management is a significant part of business development. Good governance will lead to success, while the wrong actions will lead to the bankruptcy of the organization. The same applies to IT process management. While strategic planning should take place annually, it must also cover the oversight and adjustment of internal IT processes every quarter or six months depending on the company’s size.

Final Words

If you don't have an IT plan yet, you should take care of its creation to help your company grow and reduce costs. We hope you find these tips for IT business planning useful and can apply them in practice. But not all companies consider it reasonable to build their own IT department, instead choosing to hire a professional outsourcing team that can realize the set goals. If you belong to this type of business owner, we have lucrative offers to create web or mobile products of any complexity.

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Business Planning and Support by IT-Systems

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Part of the book series: Advanced Information and Knowledge Processing ((AI&KP))

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Business planning is one of the basic tasks of corporate management. Although a detailed presentation of all different business aspects is beyond the scope of this chapter some important characteristics of business planning will be presented. The main focus will be on support by IT-systems, starting by identifying different areas like modeling and manual planning. Then different system categories used for planning purposes will be compared. Important examples are spreadsheets and OLAP based systems. Last but not least some fundamental concepts within planning systems will be discussed, like handling of hierarchies within dimensions and modeled calculations. For this purpose, some implementations will be outlined using software of SAP, Microsoft and the open source solution Palo.

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Freyburger, K. (2013). Business Planning and Support by IT-Systems. In: Rausch, P., Sheta, A., Ayesh, A. (eds) Business Intelligence and Performance Management. Advanced Information and Knowledge Processing. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-4866-1_8

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The Best Free Apps and Online Tools for Entrepreneurs

Candice Landau

13 min. read

Updated October 25, 2023

As we head toward the new year, you’re likely thinking about setting goals and getting things organized.

To help you prep, I’ve collated a list of tools—for both web and mobile devices—that have helped me and others get things done, save time, and work more productively.

• Email management tools

Boomerang for Gmail

boomeranggmail.com

If you’re like me and you do your best work from about 10pm onwards, you’ve probably also been in one of my pickles: How do you send an email at 2am without looking seriously unprofessional?

That’s where Boomerang comes in. This handy little tool allows you to write and schedule your emails for a more “appropriate” sending time. Want to look like you’re an early morning riser? Write your 2am email, schedule it for 7am, and sleep right through as it sends!

Want an affordable CRM tool to manage your contacts, deals, projects, and messages? Streak does it all from within your inbox so that you can forget having to log into a separate app to do it. I’ve only been using this tool for a short time but it has great potential to help me organize my messages based on the projects I’m working on.

This tool will suit a wide variety of businesses. Use it to manage the hiring process, to keep track of investment and fundraising projects, to manage deals, and much more. It will even let you schedule emails to be sent later and tell you when someone has read your email.

• Project management tools

Easily my favorite project management tool, this is also one that I know a number of larger businesses use. It’s my preferred alternative to Basecamp, which for for me is really only good at allowing you to converse with others related to a specific project. Trello also maintains a super creative blog that will show you how you might use their product: to stay organized , to take the stress out of the holiday season , to plan an office party , to search for a job , and to plan a meal.

At Palo Alto Software, we use it to manage our editorial calendar and the web development queue. I think it’s a great tool for listing out stock you need to buy, for prioritizing tasks with your team, and for playing around with ideas, thanks to the super easy drag-and-drop functionality built into the app. I don’t know how people function without this tool.

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This is essentially the free alternative to Basecamp. I’ve used it on and off for the past couple of years and although I’ve never raved about it as I have Trello, it’s still a useful tool that is taking strides to become ever more elegant and relevant! The interface is also a lot more in line with how my brain works which is something Basecamp has never been. If you’re looking for software that will allow you to work with your team, without needing to do it all from within your inbox, this is a good option.

• Tools that will save you time

LastPass Password Manager

lastpass.com

I’ll be honest, the idea of this site really didn’t appeal to me before I started working at Palo Alto Software, but since then, I’ve come to love it. In fact, I’d go so far as to say I don’t know what I’d do without it (I’d have to remember my passwords again?!). I love that you can also create folders and share them with other LastPass users—giving access to only those passwords you want to share, and keeping the important stuff private.

Plus, when the Heartbleed Bug hit earlier this year, this site wasn’t affected thanks to the multiple layers of encryption used. So if security is a worry for you, this one has your back. In fact, it even has a tool that will help you assess sites that may have security vulnerabilities.

Google Dictionary extension

Install it here

If you’re working on important documents and don’t want to get spelling wrong (especially if you’re working in the cloud), this handy extension is for you. Need to check spelling? Need to define a word? Need a synonym? Need to know what part of speech that word is, or perhaps how to use it? Just tap the extension you’ve installed in your chrome browser and away you go.

AdBlock extension

Our in-house eCommerce manager would probably shoot me for recommending this, but it truly is another of my favorite extensions. Online, it’s pretty easy to get distracted and advertisements on-page make that even more likely.

AdBlock gets rid of everything—Google ads, banner ads on websites, YouTube video ads, you name it. Of course, if you’re operating a business, it’s not always a good idea to work in a bubble. After all, how do you know what your competition is doing? How do you get good ideas for ads for your business if you block them off? I have it installed but pause it when I think I need a bit of the real world…

• Tools for information collectors and note takers

Google Keep

keep.google.com

You’ve probably seen this one on other lists; I know I have. But, I’m putting it here because it really is one of the best apps for “general note-taking.” When I say best, I mean fastest to use and easiest to read.

It probably works best on your mobile device but, if you have a smartwatch (in my case, the Moto 360), you can even use it on that, recording notes by voice, or just swiping through your saved notes! It’s simple, colorful, adaptive and therefore—in today’s flat design, utility driven world—sexy!

This is Pinterest for “word people.” Collect content from all over the web and organize it into lists. I’ve begun building a series of lists than I can use internally and share with colleagues—tools for editors, writers, and things I just want to remember for myself. Our copy editor, Briana Morgaine, will likely join me in doing the same soon so, if you’re looking to become a better writer, be sure to follow both of us!

Goodreads extension

goodreads.com

If you have a reading list that is as long as mine , Goodreads is a lifesaver as it allows you to unload your brain and toss the Post-it notes reminding you to buy this or that book.

Install the Goodreads extension for your web browser and whenever you come across a book online, save it to your “want to read,” “currently reading,” or “read” list. It’s also a useful tool if you’re looking for new books to read. As you may suspect, this is one audience you can rely on to produce good content or great lists. After all, its primarily comprised of readers and writers!

Other tools you can look into: Pocket (save to read later), Evernote (another one my brain doesn’t work well with but that loads of others recommend), Pinterest (for collecting images—try the “secret boards”), and Microsoft OneNote (if you’re a Windows fan).

• The simplest invoicing, accounting, and payroll tools

my.waveapps.com

Many free accounting and invoicing tools are barebones and completely unsuited to mobile-viewing. Wave is different. You can create an unlimited number of accounting reports, create and send unlimited invoices, scan receipts, manage your personal finances,  and get access to free email support.

The only things you’ll ever need to pay for are the tools that allow you to pay your employees directly, and the ability to accept credit cards online. Of course, you’ll need these as you grow, but hopefully the free features will be enough to get you started.

hiveage.com

For your invoicing needs; unlimited invoices and unlimited clients for free. I like this tool because it reminds me a little bit of LivePlan’s Dashboard feature with the dashboard and Accounts Receivable/Accounts Payable graphs, but above all I love how simple it is to create invoices, learn how to use the application, and, if you want to, add advanced paid features, or opt to only pay per feature needed.

• Marketing tools

mailchimp.com

Ever wanted to send professional email newsletters to an entire list? If you’ve been paying a digital agency to do it for you, or if you’ve been reaching out manually, MailChimp will probably make you cry.

It’s the easiest email tool out there. With drag-and-drop features, dozens of free templates, and the ability to send drip email campaigns, this tool with revolutionize your marketing.

linkedin.com

This platform is so much more than a social media tool, it’s your online business card and, thanks to recent additions—like the new publishing platform —a potential stand-in for a personal website.

Even at its simplest, it’s a great place to manage and make new connections, to find and hire employees, and to build a portfolio that showcases your skills, experience, and abilities. Don’t have a website or blog? Start creating your personal brand here.

• Branding and design tools for the DIYer

I love Photoshop and most of Adobe’s other products, but making an image in their software isn’t a matter of a few clicks, even for the most adept user. If you’re not a Photoshop guru, or you can’t afford the software, Canva is a great alternative that is already used by a number of reputable businesses.

Not only is it completely free (you only need to pay for any stock photos you use), but it also requires minimal learning, has a number of templates, and is chock-a-block full of free graphics, icons, and shapes. And, if you really do need inspiration, take a look at their new, free online design school, packed with design tips for non-designers.

Just as your LinkedIn profile is the online equivalent of your resume, your about.me page is your online business card. Beyond putting a face to your name and your credentials, this is a great place to collect the links that are relevant to you. Consider this your micro exercise in personal branding! While I haven’t spent too much time building out my own page , you can go into as much depth as you like—the site even has a new feature now called “backstory.”

Need a bit of inspiration? Take a look at Palo Alto Software employee profiles: Noah Parsons and Josh Cochrane.  And, here are some profiles I think are well worth copying: Alexis Ohanian (if you have a lot to say), Barry Feldman (nice layout), Mark F. Collins (awesome photography and a completed backstory), Valerie Becker (simple—tell it like it is), and Zach Ancell (showcase your skills on your page).

picmonkey.com

PicMonkey is Canva for photographs! This tool makes online photo editing easier than you’d believe. My favorite part? You don’t even need to create an account to use it. PicMonkey will let you crop, change the color of your picture, rotate, adjust exposure, sharpen, add creative frames, icons, text resize, and a number of other things. You do need to upgrade to the paid version if you want to use some of the “Royale” features, but I’ve never needed to so it’s not a huge drawback.

If you need a chart, a graph, a map, or an interactive graphic, infogr.am is a whole lot easier to use than Excel. Change colors, input data, and publish your graphic online all within minutes. Do note that if you use the paid account you won’t be able to download images; you’ll have to take a screenshot instead or publish online and then save, which isn’t very useful if you do need the interactive graphics.

• Want publicity? Got publicity? Tools to help you monitor and build your brand

Google Alerts

google.com/alerts

If you’ve got a Google account, you’ve already got access to this handy tool. Google Alerts will allow you to monitor any mentions of your brand, your own name, your competitors’ names, and anything else you wish to keep track of. As soon as new content relating to your alert is indexed, Google will notify you by email. This is a good way to stay on top of the news, but also to ensure you’re proactively monitoring your brand’s presence.

helpareporter.com

HARO is an acronym for “Help a Reporter Out.” This site is a journalist’s dream, but it’s also full of opportunity for any business owner willing to put in time to respond to queries. Simply put, HARO will send media coverage opportunities directly to your inbox, filtered by category.

It’s up to you to choose whether or not to respond to these queries. Some of my favorite content was produced in large part thanks to responses I received from HARO sources. Even better, if you send HARO an email letting them know your article used their tool, or the article you were featured in did, they’ll share it on their Twitter feed which is almost 100,000 followers strong.

Twitter Lists

Learn more about lists

If you haven’t yet experimented with this feature, go, now. It’s a great way to “collect” all those people whose thoughts, links, and commentary you want to stay on top of. I’ve got lists for colleagues, great writers, people I want to reach out to, and companies that produce products or services I want to stay on top of.

If multiple employees are active on social media within your company, this is also a good way to keep an eye on what they’re saying . And of course, if you want to follow your competitors, you can create a private list and add them to this. They won’t know and only you will have access to this list. Be aware: lists are public by default and people will be notified when you add them to a list, unless you make it private!

• A word to the wise

A lot of these tools are better when they’re used with specific tactics in mind or if used in conjunction with other tools and applications. For example, Trello is a great “list making” tool in its own right, but if you use it with Scrum/Agile project management techniques, you’re 10x more likely to benefit.

If you use Canva in conjunction with stock images or images sourced from the Creative Commons, you’ll have more options.

If you’re as bad (or as good) at me as collecting apps, tools, extensions, and tabs, I highly recommend checking out the Google  extension to manage extensions and something like “ session buddy ” that will let you save your 20 open tabs.

I love trying new apps and tools and finding solutions to problems by turning to things that already exist. So, if there’s something you’re looking for, let me know. I’ll be happy to recommend a tool or to do a bit of digging myself!

Candice Landau is a marketing consultant with a background in web design and copywriting. She specializes in content strategy, copywriting, website design, and digital marketing for a wide-range of clients including digital marketing agencies and nonprofits.

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3 Apps to Help You Write a Business Plan Helpful apps that guide you from brilliant business idea to an actionable plan.

By Kim Lachance Shandrow Feb 4, 2013

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

If you have a killer idea for a startup, but lack the time, resources and budget to develop a business plan , a business plan-generating app can help you get your plan on paper and, ideally, off the ground.

A number of apps simplify the often tedious, complicated process of crafting a thorough bank- and investor-ready business plan. You provide the information, they organize it into a plan, and hopefully soon you'll be in business.

Here's a look at three apps that can help get your business plan rolling:

1. Enloop. This is an all-in-one web app that walks users through every step of creating a traditional business plan. Here's how it works: Based on the data you enter into the app, Enloop automatically generates sales, profit and loss, cash flow and balance sheet projections for you, complete with explanatory graphs and other compelling visual elements. Enloop also provides standard, yet customizable business plan text for each section of your plan, including portions focused on key company information and financial data.

Enloop's Free & Easy option includes a single custom business plan packaged in a clean, professionally formatted PDF file that you can download, print and share. More fully featured paid versions range from $9.95 a month to $39.95 a month and allow you to make multiple business plans. Enloop is only web-based and not yet available for mobile devices.

Related: Reworking Your Business Plan? Consider These Tips

2. StratPad. Alex Glassey, who designed this iPad-only app , describes it as "a strategic-planning app that helps entrepreneurs with the thinking and decision-making process ." StratPad can be a smart choice for people who are writing their first-ever business plan. It is packed with several free how-to tools for beginners, including a 58-page business strategy tutorial, view-on-demand training videos, email-based customer service, and more.

A free basic StratPad edition is available for students. Paid, one-time fee plans range from $9.99 to $54.99. The more you pay, the more advanced business plan options you get. The easy-to-use app guides users through a series of simple questions and prompts. Your answers are used to develop a summary business plan, complete with revenue projections and full-color graphs and charts.

3. Business Plan Premier. This $7.99 iPad app does double-duty for users who are eager to have their business plan backed fast. Not only does Business Plan Premier help you organize and write your business plan at an extremely detailed level, it also enables you to present your finished plan to more than 3,000 high net worth potential investors, who are also members of investment research firm Ben Stein & Accredited Members Inc .

Business Plan Premier leads you through writing your prospective company's vision and mission statements, product descriptions and marketing plans. You can also use it to complete competitive and SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis, outline your management scheme, identify your startup expenses, define your target market and more depending on your needs.

Your completed business plan is exported as a Microsoft Word document that you can edit, print, email or upload to Dropbox. Business Plan Lite is the free (but much less functional) version of the app.

Related: Reverse-Engineering Your Business Plan: Success Starts With the End

Former West Coast Editor

Kim Lachance Shandrow is the former West Coast editor at Entrepreneur.com. Previously, she was a commerce columnist at  Los Angeles CityBeat, a news producer at MSNBC and KNBC in Los Angeles and a frequent contributor to the Los Angeles Times . She has also written for Government Technology magazine, LA Yoga magazine, the  Lowell Sun  newspaper, HealthCentral.com, PsychCentral.com and the former U.S. Surgeon General, Dr. C. Everett Coop. Follow her on Twitter at @Lashandrow . You can also follow her on Facebook here . 

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