Over the past several years, we’ve read about the de facto mandate for IT departments to deliver digital transformation. For some companies, this has been an exciting expedition into the future. For others, it’s been a mixed mandate—sometimes exciting, sometimes confusing or frustrating. In healthcare IT, where I’ve been working for the past decade, I’ve seen it lean more toward frustrating. The requirement to innovate and deliver these new solutions requires starting from a solid foundation. Up-to-date systems, current architectures and technologies, and staff expertise in cloud, hybrid and on-premise solutions are all required to deliver on these demands. Yet, in many organizations, these are not present.
In my new book, Renovating Healthcare IT—Building the Foundation for Digital Transformation, I provide a path forward, which I’ll outline here. Though the book is focused on healthcare IT, this information really applies to any IT department struggling to turn to the technical corner. Trying to shift from old, outdated systems and processes to become a strategic, value-added IT function for the organization is a challenge almost all of us face to one degree or another. And let’s not talk about what ChatGPT did to IT demand.
But how many of us are supporting or managing obsolete platforms, operating systems, interfaces or processes? How many of us have automated all the routine work? How many of us have implemented advanced threat monitoring solutions? How many of us can say we feel very certain our systems are fully patched to current levels, that all hard drives are encrypted or that all user passwords meet complexity requirements? How many of us have our business intelligence/data analytics functions completely dialed in?
I can say in healthcare IT (HIT), few organizations can make these claims. That’s not to say that HIT departments aren’t doing great work. Some are quite advanced in many areas, others advanced in just some areas and still others lag behind in most respects. There are good reasons for this varied state of modernization, which we won’t discuss here. The fact remains that almost all IT organizations need to spend some time cleaning up, clearing out and renovating their IT function in order to move forward.
Let’s look at a few key areas that typically need to be reviewed and renovated in order to clear space for future innovation and, ultimately, transformation.
Understand Your Organization and Industry
First, there are organizational elements you should review. These include what’s going on in the industry in which you work. Who are the market leaders, and what are they doing? How is your company similar or different? Who poses a threat, who lags behind and where are you in all of this? These answers help frame the environment in which you’re operating and inform the big picture for you.
Next, you need to look specifically at your organization and its business. Are you expanding, contracting or stable? Are you considering large acquisitions or selling off unprofitable divisions? Is your company known for being a leading edge, risk-taking enterprise or a risk-averse, conservative business?
Finally, you need to understand your organization’s strategic objectives. This is key because it’s what should drive every high-level IT decision you make. Understanding where the business wants to go enables you to develop IT strategies to achieve those objectives through technology.
Inventory Your IT Function
Once you’ve assessed your overall environment, you can begin to look at every area of your IT function—from servers to network, desktops to printers, enterprise applications to interfaces and everything in between. Whether your assets are on-premise, in the cloud or something in between, you need to inventory and assess all of them. While that may sound onerous, it’s really formalizing a lot of what you already know. In my book, I walk you through each of these assessments so that you can perform them in any order you’d like and in a timeframe that works for you.
After assessing all of your technologies, we turn to staffing. Do you have the right roles defined to deliver on tomorrow’s demands? Do you have well-crafted job descriptions that delineate those needed skills? Do you have staff that have the skills they need today? Do you have training plans to upskill your staff to meet the demands of tomorrow? Assessing what you’ll need to digitally transform the organization and leverage emerging technologies requires you to look deeply at your staff capabilities. Creating a roadmap that shows how staff today will be upskilled and trained for roles tomorrow is not only wise planning, but it also builds employee loyalty. When staff see that you’re truly committed to their success, through training and career planning, you will build a cadre of employees who want to stick around.
Assess Your Team’s Capabilities
Finally, you’ll need to assess your own leadership team. Do you and your team have the skills needed to lead tomorrow’s IT team? Do you tend to focus on management more than leadership? Do you know the difference? Assessing your team’s capabilities allows you to help existing leaders grow and helps you hire the right people to fill leadership gaps as well.
Once you’ve assessed these functions, you can create a renovation plan that suits your organization, your needs and your timing. While every IT department is resource constrained, if you develop a project plan around this renovation effort, you can assign a project manager and work it like any other important strategic project. That will help ensure you make it to the other end of the project.
Once your renovation work is done, you’ve essentially shored up the foundation of an otherwise rickety structure. You’re now ready to upgrade, update, add onto and innovate. You’re ready for whatever comes around the next corner.
Cleaning up your IT function is like renovating an old building. You have to assess, plan, clear, demolish and then rebuild. It’s the only way to find an unobstructed path forward. Add this IT renovation to your list of strategic projects for 2024 and get started today. Best of luck!
Author’s note: You can order my new book at https://www.routledge.com/9781032454412 and ISACA readers can save 20% through 31 December 2023 by using code SMA40 on the Routledge website.