An effective IT strategy is extremely beneficial to your creative agency. It is essential to achieve, maintain and support a successful business strategy.  But still, so many business owners neglect it and forget to align it with their broader business plans. Here’s some information on why you may need to take another look at your IT strategy and successfully align it with your business one.

Information technology should never be thought of as a commodity; it’s an investment. With the right IT, you can grow your business, streamline processes and take advantage of new creative opportunities.

What is an IT strategy? And why should it align with your business strategy?

An IT strategy identifies existing problems with your technology setup and the changes required to ensure your business is running smoothly now and in the future. As the world rapidly changes and becomes more global, your business needs to evolve with it.

Evolving your business and your IT strategy helps you to:

• Remain creatively competitive while keeping costs down.
• Improve client relationships
• Increase productivity and service delivery
• Reduce the risk of cyberattacks and data breaches

The main objective of an IT strategy, therefore, is to support your business strategy with information technology capabilities.

Things to consider as part of your IT strategy

Taking into consideration future goals, a flexible IT strategy should evolve as your creative business grows. By being responsive to changes in circumstances, such as budget constraints and new technologies, your business can continue to operate and thrive without any hiccups.

Here are a few things you need to consider when devising your IT strategy:

Resource optimisation and cost reduction

To ensure that your IT capabilities are being used efficiently, you need to consider all areas of technology management within your business. This includes:

• Cost management
• Workforce management
• Risk management

In smaller companies, resources may be limited, so aligning IT with business strategies means that resources are being used effectively. Using the technology that aligns with your creative business’s goals means that higher productivity levels can be achieved. This will help keep costs to a minimum, further increase your team’s creativity and boost your bottom line. You can improve productivity in several ways, such as:

• Improving communications systems and technologies
• Making remote and mobile working options available to employees
• Implementing a mobile device plan

By enabling employees with some or all of the above, you not only increase creative productivity but free up some of your own time to focus on bigger goals like scaling your business.

Sales and operations management

Sales, marketing and other operations should also be considered in your IT strategy.

When you’re putting your strategy together, make sure you consult your own marketing and communications plan closely and ensure your IT can support its goals. Being able to support your marketing and communications activities is important for maintaining good client relations and will help you respond quickly to new sales opportunities.

Aligning your IT strategy with your sales and marketing operations will also help with things like optimising your client list and predicting demand to ensure that you always stay ahead of the game.

Growth and new technologies

The point of any IT strategy is to help boost your business growth.

By adopting a scalable IT strategy, your creative business will be in a good position to cope with increased levels of client demand, a larger workforce and other changes. Furthermore, your business will become more efficient and productive once you redesign and streamline internal processes.

Remember, not matter how good you think your IT set up is, there is always room for improvement. So be proactive and ensure your business technology is always optimised to your goals.

Further reading 

• How proactive IT management keeps your business on its feet
• 5 essential bits of IT advice for small businesses
• IT application upgrade checklist for growing small businesses
• Technology: the tool that SMBs use to power growth

It’s time to align

Aligning your IT strategy with your broader business plans will help you take advantage of every opportunity, grow your business and stay ahead of the competition.