Developing a digital strategy

Question

I work in Australia for one of the world's largest companies. Our marketing team has a large budget for IT (information technology) projects but has very little direction or guidance in the way that money is spent (budgets and tracking costs).

At the moment, our IT department is very reactive; essentially, we work on whatever projects land in our lap (lack of strategic planning).

Over the next twelve months, I would like to define a strategy for each of our marketing departments to ensure that each project aligns correctly (and include those strategies in a global Strategic planning process on a long term basis). This will also ensure there is money and time left to research new ideas, and provide guidance to the business.

Can someone please provide me information on how I can start learning about strategic planning and where I can find additional informations (books, publications, web, etc.) Thanks

Answer 1

If it were me, I'd answer the following questions:

1. What is the parent company's vision, mission, and guiding principles?
2. What is the parent company's top ten priorities for this year, next, and in five years?
3. What is the IT department's vision, mission, and guiding principles?
4. What are its critical success factors?
5. What does the IT department's current SWOT analysis suggest?
6. Who, what, where, why, and how will the IT department support the parent company's priorities?

I would use five to seven critical thinkers to put to this together, including the nay sayers of the group. It would likley target around 3 months to get this done and would keep it as simple as possible. It would never be published as final, i.e., it would be a living document open to ongoing iterations.

Answer 2

You chose the tag "Team management" and you are talking about a "digital strategy".

Usually, the strategies are included in a strategic plannification process you do every five years for example. It is a mid-term process (1 to 5 years) or a long term process (over 5 years).

Strategic planification process steps (summary):

• 1- Put your vision in one statement: For example at Facebook they say : "Being a more opened and connected world". That is your vision.

• 2- Fix your goals: what do you want to achieve, to reach; what are the result you want to have. Your goals have to be mesurable. You could have for example a goal to lower the cost of employees moving from a building to another. You can put an exact figure or a precise number to reach.

• 3- Ask yourself: "How I am going to reach those goals?". So, you write down 4 or 5 strategies. A strategy is a general statement on how you will achieve or reach one of your goals. For example: "We will concentrate all the team members of this project in the same work place or building to encrease the team effectiveness and the team spirit"

• 4- Chose tactics: Those are precise ways to implement your strategies. How you are going to do it precisely. For example, a tactic would be a way of moving effectively the employees without slowing down their produtivity. A specific moving tactic.

After the job is done, or at the middle of it, for example; you can evaluated if you achieved and reached your goals; if not, your strategies and tactics have to be changed to have the results you expect or you need.

Those guidelines can apply to all situations. You can develop them more or less depending on the size of your compagny and/or departments.