6.1IT Strategy and Planning

Deciding how to use IT as the means to realize management strategy is the role of IT strategy. The strategy domain rests on understanding the full chain from strategy to a blueprint for organization-wide optimization, through reworking business processes themselves when needed, to an actual systemization project.

6.1.1IT strategy and EA

• IT strategy is the medium- to long-term policy for how information systems will be built and used to realize management and business strategy. It is not merely an IT department plan—it starts from alignment with management goals.
• Enterprise Architecture (EA) is a method that organizes an entire organization's business and systems into four layers: business, data, application, and technology, and maps a migration plan from the current state (As-Is) to the desired state (To-Be). Its aim is organization-wide optimization, preventing a proliferation of systems each optimized only for its own department.

6.1.2BPR/BPM, RPA, and DX

• BPR (Business Process Reengineering) is an effort to rethink existing business processes from zero and redesign them fundamentally—not a partial improvement but a radical transformation of organizational structure and workflow. BPM (Business Process Management) is a management approach that continuously visualizes, analyzes, and improves business processes. If BPR is "a one-time radical overhaul," BPM is "a mechanism that keeps improving."
• Business modeling visualizes workflows and information exchanges as diagrams (e.g., process flow diagrams, DFDs), used to grasp the current state and pinpoint what to improve. RPA (Robotic Process Automation) is a mechanism where software robots execute routine clerical work (data entry, transcription, report output, etc.) in place of humans—directly addressing labor shortages and reducing human error.
• DX (Digital Transformation) is establishing competitive advantage by using digital technology to transform products, services, and the business model itself, and even organizational culture. Its essence lies in going beyond digitizing existing work (digitization) or partial digitalization to actually transform the business model.

6.1.3System planning, requirements definition, and procurement

• System planning decides which systems, when, and in what priority order to develop, based on management strategy and IT strategy. Requirements definition is the process, following system planning, of clarifying what users and business departments want to achieve (business requirements, functional requirements, non-functional requirements). Because it underlies every later development phase, a misalignment here is the biggest cause of rework.
• RFI (Request For Information) is a document that asks candidate vendors to provide information (the goal is to grasp technology trends and track record). RFP (Request For Proposal) is a document that presents requirements and asks for a concrete proposal (system configuration, schedule, estimate). Exams test the ordering—RFI comes first, RFP comes after—and the difference in purpose: gathering information versus requesting a proposal.
• Solution business is a business form that, rather than selling a single product, analyzes a customer's management issues and combines and delivers an optimal solution (systems, services, operations)—for example, SI, outsourcing, or proposing cloud service adoption.

Consider a consultation from mid-size manufacturer A, which wants to move away from paper slips and Excel spreadsheets scattered across departments. Management first sets the management goal of "halving order-processing lead time within three years," and formulates the IT strategy to realize it. Discovering that current systems are siloed by department and not organization-wide optimal, the company uses EA to organize As-Is/To-Be across the four layers: business (the order process), data (customer/inventory masters), application (each department's individual systems), and technology (aging servers). Along the way, paper-based approval flow turns out to be the main cause of processing delays, so a simple system refresh is judged insufficient, and the company undertakes BPR to digitize and simplify the approval process itself. Routine order-data entry is automated with RPA, freeing staff to be reassigned to higher-value customer engagement. That much is efficiency improvement of existing work, but A goes one step further and decides to launch a new business that analyzes accumulated order data to offer demand-forecasting services to its trading partners—positioning this as DX. For the actual systemization, system planning sets priorities (starting with overhauling the order system), and requirements definition, involving the business departments, pins down requirements such as "complete processing from order to shipment within three days." To outsource development, the company first sends an RFI to several vendors asking about their technology and track record, then, based on the responses, narrows the field and issues an RFP to a few finalists requesting concrete proposals—in that order.

6.1.4Section summary

• IT strategy starts from alignment with management goals. EA maps As-Is to To-Be across four layers (business/data/application/technology) for organization-wide optimization
• BPR = radical one-time redesign; BPM = continuous improvement cycle. RPA = automation of routine tasks (a means); DX = transformation of the business model/culture (a goal)
• Requirements definition sits at the very upstream of development (a top source of costly rework if mishandled). Procurement order: RFI (request for information) first, RFP (request for proposal) after