The role of IT has grown over the past few decades to become a substantial part of business operations for most companies. Now, a substantial amount of technologies and processes are used throughout the vast majority of organisations.

To ensure comprehensive management of IT, an effective strategy needs to be implemented across all levels of staff. The question is, how should this process be undertaken?

Defining the strategy

An IT strategy can be most clearly defined as a process employed by businesses to ensure success through IT implementation. Due to the benefits that new technologies offer organisations, coordinating efforts into an effective strategy offers the best chance of success.

"Although some or all tasks involved in creating the IT strategy may be separate, […] IT strategy it is an integral part of the business strategy," explains research organisation Gartner in its online IT glossary.

Clarify and communicate

Once the goals of the strategy have been defined, it's necessary to clarify and communicate to staff. While this may seem difficult, it's actually a relatively simply process.

Clarification is important, and needs to focus on broad understanding across all levels. It's all too common for strategies to be expressed as executive level statements that most staff cannot understand, making them inaccessible. An IT strategy should have clearly defined objectives and provide clear direction.

Following clarification, communication needs to become the next step. Organisations can often struggled to communicate effectively, and are usually disjointed across all departments. It's important that discussions occur at each level of the company, effectively communicating the IT strategy to different departments and staff.

As such, the strategy is clearly understood by every member of the organisation.

Taking advantage of a workshop

A workshop from ALC could be the best method of IT strategy implementation, as it's able to outline and explain the tools businesses require to formalise and deliver a strategy.

In an environment of different stakeholder needs, a workshop is almost certainly the best option for businesses.