Results-Focused IT Strategies

Results-Focused IT Strategies for Business

Companies and institutions have experienced a startling 70% failure rate in investing in information and data management technologies. According to a recent Harvard Business Review report, this trend has impacted smaller and mid-size companies the most.

Why? And with so many systems from which to choose, what are the real “do’s” and “don’ts” that companies can take (and avoid) to beat the odds?

Anatomy of Failed Expectations

Research indicates that the ultimate success or failure in information management starts at the beginning of how, why, and who oversees the choices and implementation of any given information management system. Researchers Cynthia A. Conway and Mitch Codkind acknowledge this in a striking Harvard Business Review report. At the same time, most smaller-to-mid-size companies have already “made significant digital investments” operationally. Companies have done so in ways that “lack insight” into what these companies need to achieve bona fide business goals.  Of the numerous factors in play, Conway and Codkind conclude that two essential missteps set smaller-to-mid-size companies on the road to unrealized expectations:

• Failure to formulate clear, achievable, strategic business goals within set periods.
• Failure to understand “that you need specialized business analytics expertise” to reshape “how your organization makes decisions” and, crucially, how to choose the correct digital information management tools, team, and protocols to enhance every facet of business operations.

Identifying The Wrong Stuff

A prime example of these two missteps –– failure to formulate optimal strategic business plans and failure to secure “specialized business analytics expertise” –- reflects executive management’s unpreparedness for considering technology change. Executive management often resorts to technology choices grounded in previous work.

This is where consulting partners that combine information technologies and strategic business planning expertise are essential.

Instead, many executive management teams rely on IT departments to make strategic business decisions and implement information management technology solutions. These departments are too often isolated from the day-to-day conversations about business strategy, product development, and desired outcomes. Additionally, industry, government, and academic studies confirm that at least one-fourth of all IT management and staffing hold no bachelor’s degree, let alone formal education in essential areas such as financial planning, marketing, distribution, labor, and productivity management. Executive management’s over-reliance on IT departments is hampered by IT staffing that has neither long-term, company-wide work experience nor essential business-oriented college and graduate school training. Chronic talent shortages in high-tech have pushed companies to hire IT staff without a college education. A 2022 CompTIA survey confirmed that 85% of polled HR leaders support eliminating degree requirements. Relegating decisions on the most crucial part of business to the group with the least number of employees with advanced education makes no business sense.

So, even when executive management of smaller companies replace their entire IT management and staff at considerable expense, the new incoming teams most often resemble the ones whom they replace: undertrained in how to choose, implement, and manage digital information systems to achieve the company’s specific and essential strategic goals in a permanently volatile, information and data-driven world economy.

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Think Strategically. Act Flexibly.

Industry research strongly suggests that companies can beat the high failure rate in choosing and implementing information/data management technologies and protocols via:

• Partnering with a comprehensive and flexible information management provider can reduce security, operations, and downtime by as much as 50%.
• Choosing a management partner that delivers technological and strategic business expertise and a culture of customer-centric commitment to analyzing and responding flexibly to your company’s short-term needs and long-term information goals.
• Understanding that today’s new paradigm of ever-evolving business analytics and AI is a permanent condition.

Every business must formulate comprehensive but flexible strategies that not only integrate these new capabilities but also with a simple but essential concept in mind: choose the emerging technologies and your information/data management not just because it is the new norm but to serve your company’s needs, help solve your company’s planning, security, and customer challenges, and deliver your company’s desired business goals.

An established and knowledgeable management consulting team (such as BACS Consulting) provides substantial flexibility in building the right team for the proper challenge and then dismantling this team as needed. Very few companies can create ad hoc groups of professionals with specific knowledge and experience like a capable consulting firm.

When your company is ready to take those steps, BACS Consulting Group can deliver definitive advantages: client-centric, collaborative approaches, flexibility in meeting budget targets, and technology solutions for achieving higher efficiencies and operational nimbleness.

Contact BACS Consulting for more information without a sales pitch: www.BACSCG.com, Rkoski@BACSCG.com, or PAdams@BACSCG.com.   650-383-4248