MOST Analysis

Mission Statement

The first 30 days of the 90-day plan will be focused on current-state assessment. To understand what the business already has and where it is lacking in terms of IT or digital technology, it is important to carry out a thorough assessment of the current business state. Only when we know where we are starting from will we be able to map out the path to the future goal that we want to attain. A current-state assessment for IT transformation will have to take into account all aspects of the business. It has to evaluate the current processes, systems, and operations in the business. The current-state assessment will also study the organization’s structure, culture, and approach towards change. The assessment will also review the roles of the different people working in the organization in an attempt to see how their skills can be better utilized and if some reshuffling can benefit the transformation process. This current-state assessment will bring forward the opportunities for improvement and pain points that need to be addressed during the IT transformation program. One of the major reasons for failure in IT transformation projects is that companies do not review their current state and assume that the existing technology can simply be migrated to a new platform, or new technology can directly be implemented to improve the efficiency and productivity of the organization. This approach does not help because it does not tell what to prioritize or which areas require more attention. A complete current-state assessment helps make informed strategic decisions that ensure that the IT transformation will add more value to the organization.

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Objectives

01. How to Perform an Internal IT Audit: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
02. Auditing Tech Controls in Support/Service Model; departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
03. Understanding Business IT Requirements; departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
04. Security Risk Assessment of Current and Future IT Investments; departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
05. Conducting Performance Reviews of In-House IT Teams; departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
06. Efficiency of Outsourcing IT Requirements; departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
07. Assessing Current Readiness for IT Integration: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. 1 Month
08. Effectiveness of Measuring ROI for IT Innovations: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
09. Optimizing and Improving IT Dependency: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
10. Cost Analysis of IT Transformation: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
11. Use of Information Technology to Enhance Customer Experience: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
12. Current Challenges in IT Use and Implementation: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month

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Strategies

01. How to Perform an Internal IT Audit: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
02. Auditing Tech Controls in Support/Service Model: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
03. Understanding Business IT Requirements: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
04. Security Risk Assessment of Current and Future IT Investments: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
05. Conducting Performance Reviews of In-House IT Teams: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
06. Efficiency of Outsourcing IT Requirements: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
07. Assessing Current Readiness for IT Integration: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
08. Effectiveness of Measuring ROI for IT Innovations: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
09. Optimizing and Improving IT Dependency: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
10. Cost Analysis of IT Transformation: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
11. Use of Information Technology to Enhance Customer Experience: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
12. Current Challenges in IT Use and Implementation: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.

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Tasks

01. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze How to Perform an Internal IT Audit.
02. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Auditing Tech Controls in Support/Service Model.
03. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Understanding Business IT Requirements.
04. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Security Risk Assessment of Current and Future IT Investments.
05. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Conducting Performance Reviews of In-House IT Teams.
06. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Efficiency of Outsourcing IT Requirements.
07. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Assessing Current Readiness for IT Integration.
08. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Effectiveness of Measuring ROI for IT Innovations.
09. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Optimizing and Improving IT Dependency.
10. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Cost Analysis of IT Transformation.
11. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Use of Information Technology to Enhance Customer Experience.
12. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Current Challenges in IT Use and Implementation.

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Introduction

Assessments are necessary for the smooth operations of the IT department. Assessments need to be conducted by the right personnel so that they can gather the best possible results and help maintain your competitive advantage in Information Technology.

Information technology is an important part of the work structure today and organizations need to be technologically advanced to compete with competitors and better serve customers. Today, many organizations spend exuberant sums of money on IT and tech resources to reap the benefits of enhanced data and cyber security. The key methodology here is to ensure that IT systems are reliable and do not break down when faced with cyber attacks and threats.

Most organizations today have invested heavily in their business IT department and are in a continuous cycle of identifying IT requirements and making investments where they can for the future. Budgets allocated for the IT department are often more comprehensive and detailed than any other department and allow businesses to align with the prevalent technology around them.

A popular practice in most businesses today is to have the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) oversee the responsibilities and requirements of the IT department. There are several reasons why following this structure could help your organization and make sense in the long run.

1. Most organizations today have a substantial percentage of the total budget allocated for the IT department. However, not many IT executives and managers are well versed with techniques and strategies to manage financial responsibilities that come with a large budget. A CFO is usually well-suited to manage budgets and can help set IT progress and requirements in line with the money allocated for the department.

2. Most Chief Financial Officers are also in a better position to control structures and set financial objectives that are needed for the IT department to act in line with the intentions set by the management. Since CFOs are tasked with allocating funds and setting budgetary objectives, they are well aware of management intentions and can translate that into their management style when managing the IT department.

3. Most Chief Financial Officers come with a strong sense of organizational skills and project management aptitude. These skills can come in handy to ensure that key IT projects and requirements are completed in time, within the specific business requirements, and within the budget set for them. This helps the organization move forward in its progress towards IT dominance and strategic objectives and goal setting.

Many organizations have started trusting CPAs and CFOs with the requirements of their IT department. And, while these CFOs have the budgetary aspect of it all covered, this chapter covers some of the steps and techniques they can follow to understand business IT requirements and evaluate new IT technologies.

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Steps for Building an Effective IT Department

There are certain steps that CFOs assigned with leading an IT department to success can follow in their managerial style. These steps include:

IT Objectives Should Always be Aligned with Company Objectives

The way IT departments function has significantly changed during the last couple of decades. In the past, we saw that many IT departments were left to devise and develop their own strategies for coming periods and years. This was because business leaders weren’t well versed with the ever-changing techno babble mentioned by IT heads and because the IT department wasn’t seen as strategic and as important to the overall development and strategic goals of the organization.

However, the business environment is more comprehensive and developed today than ever. The IT department plays a comprehensive role in determining how companies achieve their objectives and move towards overall success. IT departments today are considered to be key enablers for multiple business objectives and are leading the wave of change forward. Organizations and the executives tasked with leading them today realize that almost all business objectives can only be achieved through reliable and well-functioning systems managed by the IT department.

Therefore, organizations wishing to build an effective IT department that eventually inspires the business forward should ensure that all IT objectives and functions are aligned with the goals set by the organization. To align both IT objectives and business objectives, organizations should write their objectives on paper and make them clear.

Both the organization and the IT department should have well-defined goals and objectives that are documented and written down for almost everyone in the organization to view and comprehend. Obviously, since water trickles down, the company’s objectives and goals should be defined and written down first, before the IT department jots its objective. The objectives and goals set by the IT department should be heavily influenced by the goals set by the company itself.

For instance, if an organization wishes to expand to new international markets and mentions this down as a goal, the IT department should ensure they follow it up with strategic backing. The IT department should hence look to develop strategic applications and systems that help the business make the transition to international markets in a seamless manner.

Establish IT Governance

Perhaps the biggest point of concern and frustration for both IT management teams and business executives is the continuous inflow of complex projects and project requests that come with impossible requirements. Many IT executives have failed to monitor IT governance due to the regular inflow of projects with ridiculous requirements. The constant pressure to meet short deadlines on projects while ensuring the fluid flow of routine operations can seriously dent organizational reserves. This process can become impossible if the IT department lacks enough members and personnel.

This disconnect between the IT department and the management of projects often comes through alack of proper IT governance in an organization. IT governance is best defined as the practices businesses follow to capture, publish and regularly review all of the project requests initiated by the IT department. IT governance is achieved through regular meetings with business stakeholders, including the top management and department leaders. IT managers should provide a detailed list of all current IT obligations in this meeting, along with a list of all future projects that need to be addressed soon.

During an IT governance meeting, the top management in the organization can collectively sit together to review the obligations of the IT department and set priorities for the future. If it deems necessary, the organization will redirect the key company IT resources to a new project that is known to be of a higher priority.

This ensures better IT management and ensures that all business leaders and stakeholders are better informed of the obligations undertaken by the IT department and how it is fulfilling them. Additionally, business leaders will also know of the likely timeframe for completing IT projects, the reasons behind re-prioritization, the inability to deliver solutions, the need for more advanced IT solutions, and other IT requirements.

Good IT governance allows IT leadership teams to have a better understanding and a clear direction of how all IT resources are to be utilized in the future. This evaluation of priorities will help set a clear direction for the future and reduce the burden and stress levels exerted on IT teams.

Manage and Mitigate Electronic Risk

Information security and cyberattack management is a hot topic in most IT departments and IT firms today. As cases of identity theft, data loss, hacking and malware viruses continue to infiltrate businesses, organizations of all sizes have come to realize this as a common enemy, especially because of the bad reputation and the negative light such an attack sheds on affected companies.

The risk of data attacks, along with the increase in regulatory requirements for companies located in multiple industries, data protection laws for most global jurisdictions and the strict requirement of credit card providers, has brought attention towards data protection and cybersecurity.

Information security is an important part of IT management today and deals with measuring, identifying and managing risks related to the integrity, confidentiality and availability of IT assets to a required level. Executives should come together here and identify their role to advise and educate every member of the IT team and the management team. Security professionals can be hired to educate teams and arm organizations with the technology and the information they need to minimize the chances of such attacks in the long run.

Your organization’s security program should ideally be based on a stringent framework, including a set of documented baselines to influence risk decisions.

• Organizations can use multiple frameworks here. However, the best approach to adapt here is to realize the most common framework in your industry, as it aligns with the regulatory and legal compliance of your business environment.

• Conduct a risk assessment to strategically analyze and identify the weaknesses of your organization.

• Once you identify weaknesses, you should work on an action plan and address items that deserve high priority.

Endpoint security should also be ensured, as endpoints are most susceptible to data thefts and threats. Endpoints include PCs, laptops, tablets, and other smartphones used by employees in your organization to access the company’s ERP systems.

Measure IT Performance

IT plans for the future can be set by measuring IT performance and working on them to achieve systematic growth. If your organization makes a hefty investment in Information Technology, it does make sense for you to periodically measure the returns on the investment and evaluate the value it brings within your organization. This is, however, easier said than done.

Most organizations today would agree that perhaps the biggest indicator of IT performance today is uptime. Uptime is usually a measure of just how much time systems are up online to support and recognize business transactions. However, organizations and IT managers need to realize that IT systems need regularly planned downtimes for patching, upgrades, and general maintenance. Besides systematic downtimes for system maintenance, your business applications should be up and running.

Another way to measure IT progress is to check the way they’re working on key projects. IT governance meetings—outlined above—can help check whether milestone dates are being consistently achieved or if the department is slacking in areas that require constant attention.

If you have an IT helpline, you can measure the efficacy and the general benefits of this helpline through the following ways:

• The number of calls made to your helpline each month.

• The number of calls resolved by the helpline without being escalated and handed over to another department.

• The average wait time for consumers before a call is answered.

• The number of abandoned calls before someone picks up and answers.

Another way to measure the efficacy of your IT department is through vulnerability management. A well-run IT department has plans in store to manage strategic vulnerabilities and does not take system attacks lightly.

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Factors to Help Evaluate a New Technology

A major part of understanding IT requirements is evaluating new technologies and seeing whether they really sit well with your organizational strategy and goals. Most organizations jump straight on the bandwagon when they hear about new technology and its potential in management and overall success. However, organizations should put all new technologies through diverse evaluation criteria and ask a few questions before implementing them within their system.

In this section, we study a few factors that can help you evaluate new technologies and see whether they sit well with your IT requirements:

Development Cost

The very first thing to consider in the evaluation process is how much this new technology will cost you. Get an estimate of the entire amount it will cost you to integrate this new technology within your system and start using it. Development time also matters here because time is money for most businesses today.

Besides just the cost of implementing the technology, also think of how much it would cost you to create the right ecosystem for the technology to flourish. How much more would you have to pay to developers working on this new technology than the other developers you have working for you right now?

Development costs can either make or break your decision to move to a certain technology. For instance, Forrester’s survey of over 54 autonomous car manufacturers found that the support environment required for manufacturing and integrating the technology for self-driving vehicles is still too high.

Consider Threats

IT managers should consider all facets of a change process before implementing it. In line with this, IT managers should consider the risk of implementing new technology and what it means in terms of financial aspects, security and business viability. If you aren’t sure what your technology will be like in the foreseeable future, it is likely that you will suffer due to the risks and threats involved with it.

Many organizations have ditched implementing new technology because the safety and security risks on offer are just too much for them to cover.

Capability

Perhaps the most important vector to consider before bringing in new technologies is the new capabilities they bring to the table. The new technology you go for should open up new business capabilities that you really want to achieve. Unless it opens up new doors, you shouldn’t be investing heavily in it.

Usability

Usability is another important factor to consider when moving towards new technology. The new technology that you transition to should imp