Year-end CIO How to Dynamically Adjust IT Strategy

At the end of the year, at the end of the year, many levels of corporate leadership, management mechanisms, business strategies, and cultural development will be adjusted to varying degrees. Today, informatization technology has been integrated into companies, especially In the nerve centers of large-scale enterprise groups and joint-stock companies, almost all aspects of business processes and management processes of enterprises have left many traces of informatization.

Therefore, for a CIO, when it comes to the end of the year, a major issue is whether the company's IT strategy needs to be adjusted. How to evaluate, integrate, and adjust enterprise IT strategy business so that the team can break out of the maximum force and combat effectiveness in the new year, and provide continuous and strong support for the enterprise's operation and management?

"Not that I don't understand, but the world is changing too quickly." In the early days, we talked about the financial crisis and the discoloration. By the end of last year, the country had invested 4 trillion yuan. Our country’s economy has been strongly started. Today’s financial crisis seems to be gradually drifting away. China’s economy has taken the lead in recovering. In 2009, the GDP of China’s national economy has achieved the goal of “guaranteeing 8” for the whole year. There is still hope in 2010 that we will “take 8-9”.

Due to the financial crisis, the domestic and international economic environment has undergone relatively rapid and major changes, which have caused strong shocks and impacts to many industries. This has also prompted the decision-makers of enterprises to constantly change their corporate strategies to respond to the economy. The impact and challenges brought about by rapid changes in the environment.

And IT is to serve the needs of business management. The IT strategy of an enterprise is to act and take advantage of the situation. It should change due to changes in the company's strategy. Therefore, after the company's strategy has been adjusted, the company's IT strategy must also move randomly. The CIO should promptly and accurately combine the requirements of the company's own strategic changes and make corresponding adjustments or adjustments to better serve the company's development strategy.

Generally speaking, IT strategic planning is one of the important directions for enterprise development. It should be a mid- to long-term plan. The time span is normally three to five years. However, things are different and corporate IT strategies are basically based on an annual basis. The information construction of the previous year, comprehensive external new environment, new business conditions, and new technology trends were added, adjusted, and rolled. The plan for informatization construction for the new year was submitted, and the plan was strictly and carefully evaluated. The projects passed by the review will be included in the new annual implementation framework plan to respond quickly and efficiently to the changing needs of the business management.

Therefore, redrafting and adjusting each year's corporate IT strategy is an important issue for corporate information construction and CIOs.

Why CIO misses IT strategy

A large number of facts have shown that many unit IT projects do not achieve the expected results and benefits. One of the main reasons is the lack of effective integration and matching between the company's strategic objectives and IT strategies. The CIO has not made timely and effective corrections to IT strategies. The adjustment will also make it difficult for IT to meet the needs of the company itself and will not be able to achieve the goal of building an IT system.

Why is the CIO "missing" and making IT difficult to fully and effectively serve the enterprise? This is mainly manifested in the following aspects:

1, IT strategic planning insufficient attention, means behind. At present, although most corporate CIOs have placed research, development of IT strategies, and strategic management of IT on an important position in informatization, there are generally unclear goals in the formulation of IT strategic planning, model analysis of problem analysis, similarity of reports, and timeliness. The situation is not outstanding, resulting in the effect is not outstanding, IT is difficult for companies to conduct dynamic and scientific effective services.

2. IT lacks effective integration with corporate strategic business. CIO defines itself as a "technical expert" and often plays the role of "technical aesthetics" rather than "business experts" and "strategic experts." In the formulation of IT strategies, there is often a lack of consideration of the realization of corporate strategy and commercial interests. It also does not fully consider the influence of IT on the organizational structure, business processes, and corporate culture. As a result, it is difficult to support the development of IT strategies. Great demand for development.

3. It is difficult to highlight the value and benefits of IT strategy with visible data. Some CIOs, although aware of the importance of combining IT strategy with corporate strategy, do not understand the way in which IT strategy embodies in corporate interests, and thus cannot judge the correctness and operability of IT strategy. Therefore, they invested heavily in information technology. However, the leaders can't see the expansion of business and profit growth; also, the CIO can't make the disclosure of important IT values ​​daily and clear. It does not let companies know the significant value of IT, and it also greatly reduces IT strategic planning every year. Difficult to be valued and supported by the company.

4. Lack of sensitivity to changes in the internal and external environment of the company. The world is changing rapidly. IT technology is also changing with each passing day. Some CIO ideas are aged and clingy to the old regulations. There is no high degree of office sensitivity, and the IT strategy cannot be constantly adjusted according to changes in the environment and corporate strategy. This unresponsiveness to changes in the outside world is undoubtedly chronic to the enterprise IT business and cannot accomplish major events.

In addition, there are complex internal and external environments such as poor basic management, organizational structure, corporate equity adjustments, changes in management mechanisms, low quality of personnel culture, insufficient attention to underlying issues, unclear corporate strategies, and business strategies that do not support the overall strategy of the company. It also makes it difficult for CIOs to develop IT strategies each year. It is difficult and difficult to implement.

How CIO Dynamically Formulates IT Strategy

Then, in the context of turbulence, opportunities, and challenges, how can CIOs think strategically and plan, plan ahead, dynamically and scientifically formulate IT strategies, cope with difficulties and challenges, and allow IT technology to continuously advance corporate management and business growth?

To do this, the CIO needs to seek breakthroughs in the following areas, adjust its annual IT strategy, and look for strategies and opportunities to improve performance:

Prepare for IT strategic adjustment

Before reorganizing the IT strategy, it is necessary to do a good job of preparing various information collection, collation and analysis. This information will be used as the basis for IT strategy adjustment and planning for the new year CIO.

First of all, the CIO must deeply understand the company's development goals, development strategies and development needs, define the overall objectives of the enterprise level, various key corporate departments and IT departments to do a variety of work; Second, we must study the development trend and information of the entire IT industry. The development trend of technology products must grasp the development status, development characteristics, and development direction of information technology itself; furthermore, we must understand the application of information technology by competitors, including specific technologies, implementation functions, application scope, implementation methods, and achievements. Lessons, etc.; In addition, the CIO should also be a “market expert.” It is necessary to work hard to learn, understand, and master the entire industry and market-related information, including trends in industrial development, trends in macroeconomic policies, and changes in the form of demand that includes mainly consumers. trend.

CIOs must also learn to use in-depth analysis using a variety of IT and market analysis tools (such as SWOT analysis tools, value chain analysis, and investment cost analysis). It is best to hold internal and external multi-level brainstorming sessions to collect and summarize various ideas, suggestions, and ideas.

IT strategy must be dynamically adjusted according to changes in the IT construction phase

As an outstanding CIO, after earnestly analyzing and studying the current domestic economic recovery situation and the current status and direction of company development, we must have agile and accurate analysis and judgment of the current economic situation and market situation, and combine various issues encountered in the development of the company. , From the perspective of IT analysis, to understand what companies need to provide IT, project construction will affect the overall cost of the company, revenue and profits, what new market demand, what new IT profit model, and thus find the company Potential business opportunities for development, and at the same time, make strategic adjustments in corporate IT, and formulate new strategic plans for new IT construction that are suitable and cost-effective as soon as possible, and quickly push forward practical work.

For example, in the initial phase of information construction and the system construction phase, the IT organization structure of many group companies will often choose centralized management. This has its certain rationality, because the centralized structure can fully share and use various IT resources, and can inherit the knowledge and experience of IT system implementation. But in the long run, it will not be conducive to IT construction and better meet the overall strategy of the company.

Because when the branch's IT construction also enters the stage of full application and optimization, the situation will change greatly. If the IT department at the headquarters still blindly covers all IT issues, it will cause management problems such as increasingly serious conflicts between resources and demands, difficulties in communication and coordination, and so on. Therefore, when a group company has the above symptoms, the CIO should conduct a timely diagnosis of the IT organizational structure to determine whether the IT organizational structure needs to be adjusted. It is advisable to change it to distributed management.

Check whether the current IT system is reasonable or not

Looking ahead to the year, CIOs are required to conduct year-end inventory of current corporate IT construction models to test the performance of IT construction and whether adjustments are necessary. It mainly includes the following aspects:

1 The market adaptability of the IT construction model is mainly reflected in whether the established IT system can support business development, on-line rate, and the popularity of employees; 2 IT construction model competitiveness, compared to the system construction of similar enterprises, the technology of the system The concept, system advancement, and cost performance must have obvious advantages. 3 The profitability of the IT construction model is mainly reflected in how much the management situation can be improved after the IT system is put into operation, and how much growth will be brought to the company's market, that is, in the foreseeable future. Output can be greater than the input; 4 the problems exposed by the current IT construction model and the direction of improvement, the focus is to eliminate information systems that can not bring return on investment or contribute to the business objectives through the improvement of information systems.

For example, in the early days when the economy was in relatively good condition, various business departments went to the systems required by their departments, and the information technology department did not have enough manpower, material resources and financial resources, or even sufficient capabilities to carry out good planning. Planning, therefore, directly led to the company's internal "more systems, more interfaces, more servers," more than three phenomena.

However, under the impact of the financial crisis and a significant drop in corporate profits, the CIO will have to adjust all systems in a high-pressure attitude, striving to minimize the existing systems and minimize the impact on other business units. The number of servers, even the merger of the system and the server.

Therefore, in the uncertain business climate, CIOs should also consider business performance while considering technical performance. The CIO should devote limited resources to projects that can truly provide measurable short-term returns, and temporarily suspend some long-term strategic projects to reduce the company's financial burden.

IT strategy must be adjusted from the "support business" stage to the "integration business"

The CIO must make clearer and more effective arrangements for specific tasks such as tasks for each stage of enterprise informationization in the new year, the time to complete tasks in each stage, and the required resource allocation and evaluation indicators for measuring the completion of tasks in each stage.

The enterprise information construction is generally divided into three phases: the business support phase, the business integration phase, and the drive business development phase. At different stages, the responsibilities undertaken by IT are also different. At this time, for a relatively mature and perfect enterprise with informatization construction, CIOs should adjust IT strategic direction and steps according to changes in the situation, actively promote the transformation of IT departments, and strive to make enterprise IT construction actively support the business from the first stage to the second. In the phase of “integration of business” transition, it helps the business department to carry out process specification, optimization and business integration, and finally to drive the business stage to further improve the management level and work efficiency of the business department, so that the company can obtain more business opportunities.

At the same time, in the new year, when companies focus on finding new business growth points, CIOs should also focus on the work centers of enterprises and put the current focus of IT departments on fully tapping and utilizing system data. , that is, from the original implementation and maintenance of the system, to data mining and analysis and utilization, and to make business analysis such as production analysis, quality analysis, sales analysis, and financial analysis, provide data and information decision, and better service. Corporate performance management and strategic goals.

Constantly adjusting and improving IT management system

Informatization planning of enterprises not only requires planning of hardware, network, and technology, but equally important is the planning and adjustment of IT management mechanisms, such as the improvement of information security system, project acceptance assessment mechanism, and information communication system, and timely implementation of these plans. Adjustment.

As we all know, IT equipment and information systems are numerous and complex, and it is impossible for a single CIO to manage their operations and maintenance alone. "One year's plan is in the spring." At the beginning of the year, the CIO needs to establish a practical and efficient IT operation and maintenance management system to assist him and the information department in the automated management. This requires an adjustment and improvement of the IT operation and maintenance management system, through the management station, with the incident management, problem management, configuration management, and change and release management, to simplify the complexity, and to integrate the IT department with the business. The overall operation of IT ensures that the system operates in a safe, stable, and continuous manner for 24 hours, allowing the IT system to maximize its effectiveness. This is also a strong support for the various business departments of the company.

Ugly went to Qianjin Jin, Niu Benchao Kyushu Spring. I wish all the CIOs and their team a better year for the Tiger Year and once again for the company!