What are the parameters that will decide the IT strategy for an enterprise?

1. Enterprise mission, vision, goals and strategy

2. Level of business leader involvement

3. Service Levels

4. Portfolio of current running projects

5. Level of automation required

6. Legacy systems status, Maintenance plans and phase out plans

7. Skills, capabilities and structure of IT organization and IT service Vendors

There could be different influencing inputs like information analysis requirements, operational requirements or future business strategy based requirements.The IT strategy for an enterprise evolves through understanding of the strategic direction of the business as well as the short term requirements of the business. Each IT organization provides services to the enterprise. Those provided services may be broad or narrow in scope but must always align and support the strategy of the business.

I feel there that an IT strategy should be quantifiably  to do one of three things:
1. Produce revenue
2. Reduce a cost
3. Mitigate a clear and present financial liability
in all three cases, the amount spent should be less than the amount(earned, saved, mitigated.) This is a must be considered as a  parameter.

We use a generic process to derive IS/IT strategy:

Strategic analysis (1) of business objectives, culture and stakeholder requirements; and (2) of process, organisation, location, data, applications and technology.

Strategic selection (1) identify options; (2) assess options; and (3) select options.

Strategic implementation (1) identify change agenda; (2) organise to deliver (3) acquire the necessary capability and competence.

According to C.K. Prahalad and Venkatram Ramaswamy, deregulation, emerging markets, new forms of regulation, convergence of technologies and industries, and ubiquitous connectivity have changed many facets of the business world. And are still causing further changes.

These factors have changed the nature of consumers. Today consumers are informed, networked, active and global.

These factors have also changed the nature of companies. Today firms can fragment their value chain in ways that were not possible before. Both the physical and the non-physical part of corporations (business and management processes) can be split up.

The above trends are enabling a new form of value creation: Co-Creation, in which value is not created in the firm and then exchanged with the customer, but in which value is co-created by the firm and the consumer. Value will have to be jointly created by both the firm and the consumer. In the traditional system, where firms decide on the products and services they will manufacture, by implication they decide what is of value to the customer. In this system, consumers have little or no role in value creation. During the last two decades, managers have found ways to partition part of the work done by the firm and pass it on to their consumers. Be it self-checkout, involvement of a subset of customers in product development, or a range of variants in between. Note that Co-Creation goes far beyond being merely customer oriented.

Steps in Co-Creation. Process

Typical steps involved in co-creating value include:

1. Defining clear objectives for the project.
2. Figuring out who are the right customers to involve in the process. The customers of today might be different than the customers of tomorrow.
3. Working with customers to find out what they really want to include in a product or service.
4. Designing products or systems jointly to meet those customers' needs. This includes selecting the partners to be included in your network.
5. Deciding how to share the value.
6. Overcoming internal resistance to change - within seller, buyer and partner organizations. This is a critical step in ensuring that you control the channel.

IT IS JUST THE CATALYST WHICH ENHANCES THE CHEMICAL REACTION OF ACCELERATING THE JOURNEY TOWARDS ORGANISATIONS END GOAL :: I.E SURVIVAL : PROFITABILITY AND BECOMING AN ETERNAL ORAGANISATION::

IT though an important componant of an enterprize, with and due to emerging trends, should emphasize on operational efficiency, costs, utility and value without making itself conspicous on the balance sheet.

IT strategy serves the corporate strategy which in turn serves the competitive strategy of any business.

Since each organization has it's own distinct competitive & corporate strategies, finding uniform parameters across industry and verticals would not be an optimal way to frame the IT strategy of a given organization.

In my opinion, one must take a balanced scorecard approach.for the sake of simplicity i am avoiding the jargon here)

A) Keep the four perspectives in consideration( Internal process,Financial,Learning &Growth and  Customer) and arrive at requisite strategic objectives that would deliver value on these four accounts.

B) Identify and define the actionable through which each strategic objective will be met and define timelines & performance measurement criteria for each actionable.

Going this way, an organization is better poised in arriving at an optimal IT strategy that is aligned with corporate strategy.
...And having a balanced scorecard approach ensures that it is measurable and holistic

cheers