Three Great Examples Of IT Strategy
Embarking on a journey of digital transformation without an IT strategy is like cooking without a recipe. The chances of making some decent tucka at best pretty slim. Having an IT strategy will not only show you the way to your goal but also make the journey less stressful and more productive. Today, let’s take time out to study how IT strategy has benefitted some organisations. These IT strategy examples may or may not be applicable to your organisation, but the learning from their experience will be of huge benefit.
1. Harvard University
Let’s start with one of the top Ivy League schools: Harvard University. The university is synonymous with the best of the best. When you are renowned for being the best, how do you get better? Harvard first undertook research to understand what emerging trends were developing in higher education and technology. In this research, they identified the trends that would have maximum impact on their IT strategy. These trends included-
- Increased experimentation in teaching and learning.
- New research opportunities
- Increasing financial pressures
- Global competition
- Changing technology in higher education.
After this, Harvard studied the effect of the trends in relation to its current educational setup and related university-wide activities. They reset their priorities to:
- One Harvard rule so that the entire community could make use of the university’s widely distributed strengths.
- Taking the science of learning a step further and increasing the entire experience of education both on and off the campus.
- Harnessing the university’s wide database to drive real solutions.
- Aiming to achieve global reach and impact.
- Creating a campus of the future with well-equipped classes.
Their work did not finish here. Next came a study of organisational enablers and barriers. An update to the existing IT strategy started taking form by identifying ways and means to overcome the barriers. These updates made room for accepting changes in technology that would address the Harvard community’s evolving needs. Their new vision was to was to have:
- Effortless access to data, information, and knowledge.
- Rapid innovation in teaching and learning.
- Seamless collaboration between the communities and disciplines.
Harvard has now successfully created a cloud computing strategy to minimize risk and increase accessibility, established easy to learn and use technology experiences that oblige personal preferences, and built a more flexible and cost-efficient technology environment university-wide
Harvard embraced technology and used it to the advantage of their staff, faculty, and students. Today Harvard still maintains its Ivy League status thanks to its dedication to moving with the times.
2. UES International
UES is an engineering company that is is a well-known name in Australia for specialised industrial solutions. They were an old-school organization to begin with, who managed their own IT requirements. In the early 2000’s they started to feel the expansion and growing pains in the form of low productivity, frequent breakdowns, slow servers and unreliable backups. They realized that all this trouble was being caused by their outdated hardware and systems. Their IT infrastructure was not capable of handling the increasing pressure of an expanding business. What they needed was a complete overhaul of their existing IT setup. Their biggest challenge was to convince the staff that a major restructuring was in order. Instead of handling the challenge in-house, they decided to seek help outside.
The contacted Lanrex, who proposed to migrate the entire IT infrastructure of UES to the cloud using Amazon Web Services. The solution is now completely hosted on the cloud using Citrix Xan AppⓇ, thereby making the UES systems faster with a reduced upfront capital costs, lower maintenance costs, faster set up and configuration of their servers. Citrix has centralised all UES applications and also provides safe remote access using any device.
Today, UES staff works more efficiently, they have a reliable work environment, faster systems and managing IT is no longer a headache. Lanrex is tasked to keep them up-to-date with the latest technology. As IT strategy examples go, UES is a study in how outsourcing can come to your rescue in a big big way.
3. Beyond Bank Australia
Beyond Bank (previously known as the Community CPS Australia) established itself as a credit union in July 2013. The bank has continuously been working towards improving and enhancing customer experience. In its bid to be step ahead, they made history in Australia by becoming the first bank to implement Dynamics 365, a business intelligence tool.
This tool served many purposes. It improves staff productivity, makes the internal processes more efficient and provides an exceptional customer experience.
Achieving many objectives in tandem proved to be difficult. Despite this, strategic thinking and the right tool made it possible to achieve them all without disturbing the working environment.
Today, Beyond Bank continues on its journey of digital excellence. Technology has allowed them to harness their potential to the max. The business has a very bright future.
Closing Notes
The experiences of others may not be an exact replica of your situation, but there is much you could learn from them. The IT strategy examples above are not the only success stories. If you look around, you will find many more. In order to rise to the occasion, they all realised that things had to be done differently. They identified their ultimate goals, studied trends in the organisation, used Information Technology to discover how they could do things better and then updated their IT strategy accordingly.
Remember in all this, clarity of goals and exhaustive research were the key to success. Another important thing was to ensure that all the employees were open to change and had no reservations about accepting them. Technology has a lot to offer, but it is up to you to find the best combination for your business.
Contact a CHB Leader in Managed IT Support to learn more about IT outsourcing and other IT security solutions for your business.
Do you want to receive quality content about technology, business growth, life and mental health every week?
[module-377]
