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IT Governance
Corporations are realizing the significant impact that information technology
(IT) can have on the success of the enterprise. Management hopes for an
improved understanding of the way IT is operated and the ability to leverage it
successfully for a competitive advantage. In particular, top management needs to
know if its IT management is answering these questions:
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Can it achieve its objectives?
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Is it Resilient enough to learn and
adapt?
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Is it able to manage the risks it
faces?
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It is able to recognize
opportunities and act upon them?
Successful enterprises understand the
risks and exploit the benefits of IT, and find ways to deal with:
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Aligning IT goals with the business
strategy
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Cascading IT goals down into the
enterprise
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Providing organizational structures
that facilitate the implementation of strategy and goals
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Establishing good relationships and
effective communications between the business and IT, and with external
partners
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Ensuring that an IT control
framework be adopted and implemented
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Measuring IT’s performance - which
measures the business performance
Boards and executive management need
to extend governance to IT and provide the leadership, organizational structures
and processes that ensure that the enterprise’s IT sustains and extends the
enterprise’s strategies and objectives. IT governance is not an isolated
discipline. It is an integral part of overall enterprise governance.
More and more educated and cautious set of stakeholders is concerned about the
sound management of its interests. This has led to the emergence of governance
principles and standards for overall enterprise governance. Furthermore,
regulations establish board responsibilities and require that the board of
directors exercise due diligence in its roles.
Enterprise governance is a set of responsibilities and practices exercised by
the board and executive management with the goal of providing strategic
direction, ensuring that objectives are achieved, ascertaining whether or not
the risks are managed appropriately and verifying that the enterprise’s
resources are used responsibly.
While governance developments have primarily been driven by the need for the
transparency of enterprise risks and the protection of shareholder value, the
use of technology for almost every aspect of the business has created a critical
dependency on IT that calls for a specific focus on IT governance.
IT is critical to managing the transactions, information and knowledge necessary
to initiate and sustain economic and social value. In most enterprises, IT has
become an integral part of the business and is fundamental to support, sustain
and grow the business. Successful enterprises understand and manage the risks
and constraints of IT. As a consequence, boards of directors understand the
strategic importance of IT and have put IT governance firmly on their agenda.
The overall objective of IT governance, therefore, is to understand the business
issues and the strategic importance of IT to the business, so that the IT can
sustain its operations and implement the strategies required to business
successful into the future. IT governance aims at ensuring that expectations for
the business are met and business risks are mitigated .
The resultant benefits of IT Governance must be realized. Boards and
executive management expect their corporation's to deliver business value by
providing services that are:
In many enterprises, expectations of
IT and reality often do not match and
corporation is faced with:
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Business losses
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Damage to its reputation and a
weakened competitive position
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Inability to obtain or measure a
return from IT investments
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Failure of IT initiatives to bring
the innovation and benefits they promised
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Technology that is inadequate or
even obsolete
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Inability to leverage available new
technologies
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Deadlines that are not met and
budgets that are overrun
We have designed
several facilitated executive sessions to
help you implement IT Governance. These sessions will show you how to
apply standards and best practices to achieve IT governance. The following is a list of topics that
we cover:
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