ITSMA - Strategy Health Check

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Strategy Health Check

Strategy in many IT services organizations can be summed up crudely as "doing what we did before, but better." Finance drives an annual planning process designed to increase revenue and profit in pretty much the same areas as the year before.

A bit harsh? Perhaps, but ITSMA research suggests that marketing typically takes a back seat in the strategy process; competitive and opportunity analysis is generally quite thin; and a negotiated aggregation of business unit financial goals serves as the foundation of most organizations' "strategies."

How effectively does your strategy process anticipate and respond to market and competitive change? Take ITSMA's Strategy Health Check for a quick review of your company's approach.


1.	Does your firm have a strategy written down?	Yes	No

2.	Is it updated at least every six months?	Yes	No

3.	Was the reason for the most recent change clearly communicated to the management team in your company?	Yes	No

4.	Is there a person in your firm responsible for tracking market change?	Yes	No

5.	Is there a person in your firm responsible for tracking competitors?	Yes	No

6.	How quickly are market or competitive changes reflected in your strategy?	Quarterly	Half yearly	Annually	Never/Rarely

7.	How quickly do changes in strategy directly link to current performance measures?	Within 3 months	Within 6 months	More than 6 months

8.	Is each element of your portfolio of services reviewed regularly against a set of revenue, profit, growth, strategic fit and competitiveness measures?	Yes	No

9.	Do investments change as a result of this review?	Yes	No

10.	How involved is marketing in strategy formulation?	Heavily/ drives it	Contributes insight	Contributes data	Not involved

11.	Can your sales force describe your differentiators from each of your major competitors?	Yes	No

12.	Do you have a case study demonstrating where you won business against these competitors as a result of each of these differentiators?	Yes	No

13.	In what percentage of deals are you surprised by what your competitors do?	Less than 25% of deals	Between 26-33% of deals	More than one third of deals

14.	How often do finance and marketing discuss the implications of changes in the market?	Regularly	Occasionally	Never


	Your Score =

	Scoring: 0-10 sell the shares 10-20 you've started but need to build on it 20-30 you're on the way the rest is straightforward 30-40 please help us with case studies!

ITSMA Marketing Tools provide guidelines, checklists, tips, and other applications to help improve marketing programs and organizations. They are available to ITSMA members as a benefit of membership. Suggestions for new tools are welcome; please send them to rleavitt@itsma.com.

Phone: 1-888-ITSMA92 (Outside the U.S. +1-781-862-8500)