Digital dependence requires agile IT strategy

Posted September 27, 2011 at 9:42 am by Quintijn Knepper in Infrastructure.

The ‘Miljoenennota 2012′ (Budget 2012) got out, again, long before its due date of the third Tuesday in September. This time it wasn’t some ‘slip’ by a political employee, or by a journalist who refused to stick to the DA-notice. This time it was an error by the IT company that, according to its website, enables ‘accessibility of your annual reports’ etc. We can at least all agree they stuck to their word on this one.

The Dutch government withdraws numerous online website functionalities because of blunders by DigiNotar; huge multinationals such as VISA and Mastercard fall prey to DDoS attacks because they refuse to collaborate on WikiLeaks; and the Dutch Minister of Finance faces, again, what is almost becoming “Budget-gate”. These are all events that reveal the changed ways we communicate and do business. Once again our dependence of online services is patently obvious. Increasingly so.

Is that bad? On the contrary. But the aforementioned examples do demonstrate what can happen when a switch-over from offline, print or actual (physical) shop to online services is made without some proper thinking or consulting the right people. If one also fails to take the changing world around us into account, IT is not risk-free.

A more changeable world than the one we live in today is hardly imaginable. Countries at the edge of bankruptcy, economies that can only keep their heads above water with government support, banks that get all the blame, volatile stock markets that mostly move downwards, political regimes that are overthrown after 42 years, and Steve Jobs who has a bigger influence on the rate of my Apple-shares than actual company performance. And through this all, there is also rapidly changing technology. Of course all these issues affect your company’s performance, and, with that, your company’s strategy.

It is no mean task to develop a fully future-proof strategy. A plan based on a unilateral month’s notice for you, with a price fixing belonging to a 10 year contract, with unlimited interim opportunities to adapt and alter technology and scope through the entire IT chain… That is what optimal strategy would amount to. But obviously that is not possible.

We have to make choices. I believe the key component of future-proof strategy is: ‘agility’. In other words, flexibility and alertness in all aspects, including technology, duration, budget, and security.

An IT-strategist does not pick one set technology, he picks the best functionality for your customers and looks for the best current technology.

Agile IT strategy does not think in terms of major integrators of the current market, with long response time and one month change windows. No, these integrators need to be made responsible for commodity oriented IT. For components sensitive to market changes, choosing a specialized partner makes more sense.

An IT-strategist does no longer choose a five or seven year contract he would normally close for cost reasons; he chooses a performance contract where qualitative and quantifiable measured values guarantee contract renewal. This way costs remain unchanged against considerable quality improvement.

Agile IT strategy is not based on a fixed budget of some years, but relates IT budgets to expected or realistic business profit.

Plus, agile IT strategy does not assume one partner has all responsibility but relies on specialists. For example, security specialists make sure major business units are protected, and architects and developers ensure an up-to-date infrastructure.

Our dependence on digitalization is beyond dispute. It is an unstoppable development with more advantages than disadvantages. In the field of business technology you need to be aware of this, both on the side of buying and selling. Your clients and users are aware as well, so the same goes for you.

I am really interested in how you currently deal with this. Are you strategically determined and would you like to join one of our strategic sessions, please let me know. I personally invite you for a substantive and mostly interactive strategic session with some of our clients. We love learning from your challenges and are happy to share our experiences, because only through agile cooperation we achieve the best results.

Quintijn Knepper

Commercial Director