"The real voyage of discovery lies not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes. "

--Marcel Proust

As is true for an organization, its IT initiatives too need to be driven by a Strategic Information Technology Plan (SITP). The arguments against strategic planning are even more glaring when it comes to information technology. There are those who believe that strategic planning was a tool of the 50's, an environment that offered high market growth, fairly predictable trends, firms with single dominant businesses & low degree of competition. It is frustrating for managers as there are deviations from expected results & the lack of tools to diagnose the cause of deviations. A strategic plan is based on the assumption that the future offers a smooth continuity of the past. It is not possible to predict the future & the SITP should not aim to do so. Trying to predict the future is the one major factor that leads to the downfall of SITPs. A well-written SITP allows resources to be properly allocated, provides a direction for change based on the organization's inherent strengths & weaknesses & sets realistic goals.

There are two extremities as far as the proximity of IT to business is concerned. While the school of thought advocating that SITPs be kept separate from the business strategy is fast becoming extinct, there are companies that believe that there is nothing like an IT strategy. IT goals they believe can be drawn from business goals. It is just part of the larger organizational strategies. It may seem logical in light of what makes up a SITP. At the strategic level you do not go into details. In a strategic IT plan, the rule of thumb to find out if it is not overly detailed is to make an executive outside the IT department read it. If it makes sense to him/her, then the document is strategic. The actual technicalities of implementing it follows from the document. IT strategies focus more on outcomes than operational tactics. However technology has become much more than a business enabler in recent years. For many a technology savvy organizations, the competitive edge that they enjoy is IT itself.

Volvo Cars of North America, LLC (VCNA) is an example here. It boasts of milestones in the online world that has few parallels in the industry. It was the first car maker to launch its website in November 1994, launched one of the largest banner ad campaigns in internet history, the first digital launch of a car in 2000 to the first multi-platform interactive television promotion in 2001 followed by the first integrated emerging media promotion in 2002 that involved ads and sponsored polls in top portals, streaming media ads, digital cable television, interactive TV, PDA services, SMS services & email newsletters. The fact that CRM, e-Business and Future Product Strategy is handled by a single department indicates the level of integration of IT in Volvo's business.

A handful of companies like Volvo are leading a revolution where IT is becoming omnipresent. The goals drawn out from the organization's strategies are no more in a particular department's domain. The cross-functional teams addressing these goals are not project based but plan based, plans that make strategies actionable & provide the organization the competitive edge. These companies choose to be at the leading edge of technology rather than walk the paths of proven ROI.

A SITP should not be technical unless it is a direct business demand or customer demand. e-CRM, telecommuting, rich media advertising, etc require a strategic level focus to gain a first mover advantage and more importantly, profits. One of the strategies of Bellevue's SITP is "Facilitate affordable, high-speed Internet access throughout the community" (Chapter 1, enterprise SITP of Bellevue city, Nebraska). A strategy such as this can have far reaching consequences like goals of kicking off a municipality based ISP and/or measures to increase PC penetration. Concepts like e-Governance & Internet based community support services would directly depend on the success of these projects.

The effect of IT on the bottom line is becoming more & more pronounced. Business continuity heavily depends on IT security, database management, backups and disaster recovery functions. Mergers & acquisitions, global outsourcing partners, the fast paced change in technology… these are complex matters, easier to identify than solve.

The CIO or person responsible for strategic IT planning should have knowledge in two diverse areas; technology & business. The combination of these skills is so rare that it can make the person the world's richest man. These rare breeds of CIOs seem to be giving way to techno savvy functional managers of the future. For the time being, the SITP still remains a document detached from the business plan & organizational strategies, governed by CFOs who see IT as a cost to control, with increasing IT budgets having no direct correlation to the organization's share prices.

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