9/16/2014 Creating a Powerful IT Contribution Statement

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The People Issue a Potential Time Bomb? Benefits Realization a lot of room for improvement

Creating a Powerful IT Contribution Statement

by Dave Aron | March 11, 2011 | 1 Comment
I have spent time this week with a couple of businesses helping them craft their IT contribution
statement. This is a critical part of the IT strategy which crystallizes how IT will help our business
win.
How does IT help a business win? There are a few ways to think about it. Below are two I find most
9/16/2014 Creating a Powerful IT Contribution Statement
http://blogs.gartner.com/dave-aron/2011/03/11/creating-a-powerful-it-contribution-statement/ 2/9
helpful:
1. Efficiency/Effectiveness/Integrity/Agility IT helps by making the business more efficient
(reducing like for like cost per transaction), more effective (able to grow/ be more productive), safer
in business (improving security, risk management, business continuity, regulatory compliance), or
more agile (faster, cheaper and/ or safer to change.)
2. Automation/Enrichment/Information/Collaboration IT helps by automating processes
(cost/quality/scalability benefits), enriching the companys products with information, improving
decision making with information, and facilitating greater levels of collaboration (B2E, B2B, B2C).
Ideally, the IT contribution statement should be useful and helpful to both senior business leaders
clarifying the value the IT organization will bring, and to IT staff helping them remain focused on
the key business outcomes.
A great IT contribution statement starts with the key business success factors and business capabilities
the enterprise needs to succeed in the planning period, then ties IT contributions to them. So, for
example, if a key business capability is absorption-style acquistions, then IT will contribute with
highly scalable applications that can absorb large books of business.
It is helpful to try to ensure that the IT contribution is not too generic (IT will provide a reliable
backbone for the business) and not simply a list of services and projects that will be completed. Also,
it is probably unhelpful to identify more than about 8-10 types of IT contribution.
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