In a recent issue Harvard Business Review has an article about HR departments. Most of the things in article also apply to IT departments.

Many IT mission statements boasts about “excellent” service, of course “beyond expectation”, about support, about “enabling the business” and a lot of related buzzwords.

But in business it’s always about competitive advantage and about customer.

Any CEO wants a competitive advantage for every dollar spent: growth, better customer service, lower costs and so on. Consider Wall Mart: every dollar they spend on IT it’s dedicated to improvements in their supply chain – their competitive advantage. And the CIO wants to provide “excellent service, beyond expectation”… I am not saying that good service is not necessary; I am arguing only that service is not the mission of IT. IT, like any part of the company must help create and maintain competitive advantage.

Next time when you draft you IT strategic plan ask yourself: what are my company’s competitive advantages? And what can I do to increase them? Or even better: what can I do to create a new competitive advantage?