IT Strategy and Planning Step 2: Understand Future Business Strategy

🎯Objective:

Ensure the IT strategy is directly aligned with and supportive of the business’s long-term vision, goals, and transformation priorities.

📌 Why It Matters

IT does not operate in isolation—its entire value lies in enabling and accelerating business outcomes. A future-oriented IT strategy must be tightly coupled with the corporate strategy. Without this alignment, IT risks becoming a cost center rather than a strategic enabler.

Understanding the future business direction helps:

Prioritize the right initiatives
Anticipate capability requirements (e.g., real-time data, global scalability)
Define the role of technology in innovation and growth

🧭 Key Questions to Explore

To understand the business strategy deeply, the IT strategy team should seek answers to questions such as:

Dimension	Questions
Vision & Goals	What is the business trying to achieve in the next 3–5 years?
Growth Strategy	Is the company expanding into new markets, products, or channels?
Customer Focus	Who are the target customers? How is customer experience being reimagined?
Operating Model Changes	Will the organization be reorganizing, outsourcing, or centralizing key functions?
Product/Service Evolution	What new services, SKUs, or business models are being planned?
Geographic Strategy	Are there new regions, countries, or franchises being targeted?
Innovation Strategy	Is the company investing in AI, personalization, digital twins, etc.?
Business Capabilities	What are the critical capabilities to build or scale (e.g., personalization, supply chain, pricing optimization)?
Target Operating Model	If available, what does the TOM reveal about future roles, processes, and systems?

🧰 How to Do It

Step 1: Stakeholder Interviews & Workshops

Interview C-level executives (CEO, COO, CMO, CHRO, etc.)
Include regional or departmental heads to capture decentralized strategies
Run 1:1 or small group workshops with strategic business units

Step 2: Review Business Artifacts

Business strategic plans
Annual reports and investor presentations
Market expansion roadmaps
Product portfolio roadmaps
Operating model blueprints (if available)
Business capability models (e.g., via APQC, BIZBOK)

Step 3: Summarize Business Strategy Insights

Translate qualitative interviews into structured takeaways
Cluster insights around themes like growth, efficiency, customer, innovation, and digitalization
Identify explicit and implied technology dependencies

Step 4: Map Business Drivers to IT Impact

Create a simple matrix linking business goals to required IT enablers, e.g.:

Business Objective	Key IT Enabler(s)
Expand to 3 new countries	Scalable cloud infra, multilingual POS, localization
Personalized customer offers	Customer data platform, AI/ML capabilities
Faster product innovation	Agile DevOps, modular architecture, A/B testing
Optimize supply chain cost	Integrated ERP, real-time analytics, IoT visibility

🧩 Optional Deep Dive: Use the Target Operating Model (TOM)

If a formal Target Operating Model (TOM) exists, use it as a foundation to:

Understand future roles, processes, systems, and data flows
Align IT capabilities to future business capabilities
Identify which IT areas need to transform (e.g., automation in finance, data mesh in supply chain)

If no TOM exists, consider co-creating a “light” version with business leaders for strategic planning purposes.