Strategic planning of IT systems should be an integral part of your overall business planning process.  It's about determining what you need and when to support your business goals, but also about looking for the new opportunities which technology may open up.

Organisations tend to acquire systems on a piecemeal basis. The result is often a mixture of operating systems and versions, little or no integration of systems, poor sharing of information and inadequate security, backup and recovery plans. The costs of replacing equipment over time are not clearly understood, and the liability escalates as more equipment is acquired. We can assist you in the process, helping you to define where your organisation is going and what part Information Technology needs to play in getting you there.

A few of the issues you might need to consider:-

What percentage of my turnover do I need to plan to spend on IT ? How can I best spend that money ?

Is IT central to our business, is it a way to differentiate us from our competition ?

Do we believe we need to own and manage the hardware, software and services ?

Are we happy to outsource some or all of our requirements ? What about the new on-demand offerings for ERP, CRM, e-commerce, accounting and payroll ?

Do we get the best out of our existing systems (and people) or do we have lots of under-utilised resources already ?

What opportunities exist to reduce our IT spend by moving away from the traditional deployment and licensing models ?

Can we user lighter or zero-client applications for word-processing, spreadsheets etc.  - do our users require the complexity of a full Windows-based package ?