IT strategy as a service - A service developed to meet a new customer demand and digital market changes; A case study on consultancy service development

Abstract: As companies today face rapid digital developments and changes in customer demand, the need and ability to respond quickly to market changes is critical. The traditional way of working with IT strategies with updates possibly each year are becoming an out dated approach as it put the company in risk working towards goal that no longer are accurate. This puts pressure on companies to work with real time IT strategy to function more as an adaptive business. Continuing, how to actually work with IT strategic issues in a digitalized era seem to be challenging for CIOs/ IT managers. From these challenges, this study aims to investigate the need for an ongoing IT strategic consultancy service, an area within service development that has not yet received much attention. A case study at an IT strategy consultancy firm has been adopted and semi-structured interviews with 16 CIOs/IT managers as well as 5 interviews with consultants was conducted. The result of the interviews with CIOs/ IT managers shows that there is a need for an ongoing IT strategic consultancy service. Based on their need, IT strategy as a service has been developed aimed to help companies with IT strategic issues and opportunities. To meet company specific needs, which findings showed varies between CIOs/ IT managers, the content of the service is divided in to a base and variable service. The base is structured as a continuous ongoing service on identified demand where the variable section offers add on services when specific need arises. The service is built on a high degree of trust and a close relationship to bring the outmost value for both parties. It is of importance that there are clear boundaries between the two parties as this will set the base for future collaboration. One aim of the service is to, in the long run, ease up customer boundaries thus creating more opportunities for IT strategy as a service to be integrated in the normal businesses. Due to the ongoing IT strategy as a service the payment model is preferably set up as a subscription which can be customized depending on the customers’ preference. The new service will have implications on the consultancy firm such as organizing new processes for the new service. The implications will arise more clearly as the service will expand to more users, hence developing a process where coordinating multiple accounts simultaneously and utilizing demanded knowledge and expertise among the consultants is important.