Learn how the Information Technology area should be integrated into a company's strategic planning.
Each area has its own activities, jargon, indicators, and measures. These particularities interfere with the strategic management process, as well as the control and generation of results. In the information technology area, services are constantly updated and evolve, and the companies responsible for this area must ensure the provision of secure, high-standard services to their clients, as this signifies added value in relation to the competition. Increasingly, IT sub-areas need to direct their activities with a business orientation. This represents a huge challenge for managers in this area who have to specialize and learn best practices daily.
Therefore, the Information Technology department begins to seek a strategic focus in order to improve the quality and security of its services, while at the same time increasing its productivity and reducing costs.
Carlos Perobelli, executive director of 5A Consultoria, believes that strategic IT management is a support area for the organization as a whole. Therefore, when a company engages in strategic planning, it defines the overall goals of the organization, and the Information Technology department develops projects to support the achievement of the company's goals. According to him, organizations need to structure themselves with the help of the IT department in three crucial areas: infrastructure, communication, and systems. This is where the specific strategic planning for this area originates. “Each area of the company has expansion and growth projects and needs support to achieve its objectives. IT supports these areas in infrastructure for business application or in the development of software or systems that automate processes. From there, IT's action plan must be linked to the company's overall strategic planning,” he emphasizes.
Perobelli also emphasizes that Stratec's strategic management software module greatly aids in tracking this planning and meeting goals. “There are people in the market who claim to have strategic planning but don't know any indicators. They keep the plan in a drawer without monitoring it. That's not strategic planning,” he criticizes. He argues that the monitoring of planned actions should happen frequently, preferably weekly, as at 5A consulting.
According to André Miranda, commercial director of the company IBS, businesses need to automate their strategic management process to gain greater clarity on the performance of their business. “The Stratec tool aids in the application of the strategic management methodology, based on the BSC. This helps the company follow its plan according to the indicator lights the system provides. With this, the manager can monitor the plan daily, and by keeping an eye on the alerts, can make changes to plans and actions,” he says. According to him, automated planning helps the company become more accustomed to and develop the habit of monitoring its actions. “The module even allows for monitoring the company's projects,” he emphasizes.
Miranda explains that IBS provides consulting services to various companies, primarily large and medium-sized ones. Because of this, when a client chooses to use the tool, they already have prior management knowledge. “I sell the software to clients who already have a management culture, have gone through consulting, and want to automate this process to make it easier,” she reveals.
“We've noticed that companies are still organizing themselves to work with strategic planning,” says Perobelli. According to him, Brazilian business leaders still have difficulty working with goals, as they believe that goals should result in bonuses, when in fact they should aim for market leadership, process improvement, and team retention. “If we look at the Brazilian market today, we see that it's more evolved than 10 years ago. So I hope that in 10 years” time, we will be even more evolved," he says optimistically.
Although IT resources are gaining increasing notoriety in business operations, even being a fundamental activity for various market segments, what is observed is a still underdeveloped management of these resources. Companies that view Information Technology as part of their strategic activity will get ahead in such a competitive market.
