information communication technology business plan

Technology Business Plan Template

Written by Dave Lavinsky

Over the past 20+ years, we have helped over 1,000 entrepreneurs and business owners create business plans to start and grow their technology businesses. On this page, we will first give you some background information with regards to the importance of business planning. We will then go through a technology business plan template step-by-step so you can create your plan today.

Download our Ultimate Business Plan Template here >

What is a Technology Business Plan?

A business plan provides a snapshot of your technology business as it stands today, and lays out your growth plan for the next five years. It explains your business goals and your strategy for reaching them. It also includes market research to support your plans.

Why You Need a Business Plan for a Tech Company

If you’re looking to start a technology business, or grow your existing technology business, you need a business plan. A business plan will help you raise funding, if needed, and plan out the growth of your technology business in order to improve your chances of success. Your technology business plan is a living document that should be updated annually as your company grows and changes.

Sources of Funding for Technology Businesses

With regards to funding, the main sources of funding for a technology business are personal savings, credit cards, bank loans and angel investors. With regards to bank loans, banks will want to review your business plan and gain confidence that you will be able to repay your loan and interest. To acquire this confidence, the loan officer will not only want to confirm that your financials are reasonable, but they will also want to see a professional plan. Such a plan will give them the confidence that you can successfully and professionally operate a business. Personal savings and bank loans are the most common funding paths for technology businesses.

Finish Your Business Plan Today!

If you want to start a technology business or expand your current one, you need a business plan. Below are links to each section of your technology business plan template:

Executive Summary

Your executive summary provides an introduction to your business plan, but it is normally the last section you write because it provides a summary of each key section of your plan.

The goal of your Executive Summary is to quickly engage the reader. Explain to them the type of technology business you are operating and the status. For example, are you a startup, do you have a technology business that you would like to grow, or are you operating technology businesses in multiple markets?

Next, provide an overview of each of the subsequent sections of your plan. For example, give a brief overview of the technology industry. Discuss the type of technology business you are operating. Detail your direct competitors. Give an overview of your target customers. Provide a snapshot of your marketing plan. Identify the key members of your team. And offer an overview of your financial plan.  

Company Analysis

In your company analysis, you will detail the type of technology business you are operating.

For example, you might operate one of the following types of technology businesses:

• Network technology : this type of technology company specializes in providing the computers, printers, scanners, and phones within an organization and making sure they are all linked together in order to work seamlessly with one another.
• Software technology: this type of technology company specializes in providing and/or installing the appropriate software needed for the business. This will include the programs and productivity tools for the organization’s computer network.
• Customer relationship technology: this type of technology company focuses on providing a customer relationship management system (CRM) that keeps track of all customer interactions and information in order to consistently provide exceptional customer service.

In addition to explaining the type of technology business you will operate, the Company Analysis section of your business plan needs to provide background on the business.

Include answers to question such as:

• When and why did you start the business?
• What milestones have you achieved to date? Milestones could include the number of client companies served, number of positive reviews, reaching X amount of client companies served, etc.
• Your legal structure. Are you incorporated as an S-Corp? An LLC? A sole proprietorship? Explain your legal structure here.

Industry Analysis

In your industry analysis, you need to provide an overview of the technology industry.

While this may seem unnecessary, it serves multiple purposes.

First, researching the technology industry educates you. It helps you understand the market in which you are operating. 

Secondly, market research can improve your strategy, particularly if your research identifies market trends.

The third reason for market research is to prove to readers that you are an expert in your industry. By conducting the research and presenting it in your plan, you achieve just that.

The following questions should be answered in the industry analysis section of your technology business plan:

• How big is the technology industry (in dollars)?
• Is the market declining or increasing?
• Who are the key competitors in the market?
• Who are the key suppliers in the market?
• What trends are affecting the industry?
• What is the industry’s growth forecast over the next 5 – 10 years?
• What is the relevant market size? That is, how big is the potential market for your technology business? You can extrapolate such a figure by assessing the size of the market in the entire country and then applying that figure to your local population.

Customer Analysis

The customer analysis section of your technology business plan must detail the customers you serve and/or expect to serve.

The following are examples of customer segments: individuals, small businesses, and local companies that need technological services.

As you can imagine, the customer segment(s) you choose will have a great impact on the type of technology business you operate. Clearly, large companies would respond to different marketing promotions than small businesses, for example.

Try to break out your target customers in terms of their demographic and psychographic profiles. With regards to demographics, include a discussion of the ages, genders, locations and income levels of the customers you seek to serve.

Psychographic profiles explain the wants and needs of your target customers. The more you can understand and define these needs, the better you will do in attracting and retaining your customers.

Finish Your Technology Business Plan in 1 Day!

Don’t you wish there was a faster, easier way to finish your business plan?

With Growthink’s Ultimate Business Plan Template you can finish your plan in just 8 hours or less!

Competitive Analysis

Your competitive analysis should identify the indirect and direct competitors your business faces and then focus on the latter.

Direct competitors are other technology companies. 

Indirect competitors are other options that customers have to purchase from that aren’t direct competitors. This includes technology companies such as Geek Squad, local stores that sell and rehab tech equipment, online technology companies, etc.

With regards to direct competition, you want to describe the other technology businesses with which you compete. Most likely, your direct competitors will be technology businesses located very close to your location.

For each such competitor, provide an overview of their businesses and document their strengths and weaknesses. Unless you once worked at your competitors’ businesses, it will be impossible to know everything about them. But you should be able to find out key things about them such as:

• What types of technology do they provide?
• What areas do they serve?
• What type of technology company are they?
• What is their pricing (premium, low, etc.)?
• What are they good at?
• What are their weaknesses?

With regards to the last two questions, think about your answers from the customers’ perspective. And don’t be afraid to ask your competitors’ customers what they like most and least about them.

The final part of your competitive analysis section is to document your areas of competitive advantage. For example:

• Is your technology business more capable than the competition?
• Will you provide technology services that your competitors don’t offer?
• Will you provide faster technology service?
• Will you provide better customer service?
• Will you offer better pricing?

Think about ways you will outperform your competition and document them in this section of your plan.  

Marketing Plan

Traditionally, a marketing plan includes the four P’s: Product, Price, Place, and Promotion. For a technology business plan, your marketing plan should include the following:

Product : In the product section, you should reiterate the type of technology company that you documented in your Company Analysis. Then, detail the specific products you will be offering. For example, in addition to technology services, will you provide computer repair, 24/7/365 service, phone installation, and any other services?

Price : Document the prices you will offer and how they compare to your competitors. Essentially in the product and price sub-sections of your marketing plan, you are presenting the services you offer and their prices.

Place : Place refers to the location of your technology company. Document your location and mention how the location will impact your success. For example, is your technology business located near an office complex, an urban setting, or a busy neighborhood, etc. Discuss how your location might be the ideal location for your customers.

Promotions : The final part of your technology marketing plan is the promotions section. Here you will document how you will drive customers to your location(s). The following are some promotional methods you might consider:

• Website and SEO marketing
• Commercials
• Social media marketing
• Local radio advertising
• Business networking

Operations Plan

While the earlier sections of your business plan explained your goals, your operations plan describes how you will meet them. Your operations plan should have two distinct sections as follows.

Everyday short-term processes include all of the tasks involved in running your technology business, including updating technology, client communication and scheduling, marketing, and implementing and installing the new technology for a client.

Long-term goals are the milestones you hope to achieve. These could include the dates when you expect to obtain your XXth client company, or when you hope to reach $X in revenue. It could also be when you expect to expand your technology business to a new location.  

Management Team

To demonstrate your technology business’ ability to succeed, a strong management team is essential. Highlight your key players’ backgrounds, emphasizing those skills and experiences that prove their ability to grow a company. 

Ideally you and/or your team members have direct experience in managing technologys. If so, highlight this experience and expertise. But also highlight any experience that you think will help your business succeed.

If your team is lacking, consider assembling an advisory board. An advisory board would include 2 to 8 individuals who would act like mentors to your business. They would help answer questions and provide strategic guidance. If needed, look for advisory board members with experience in managing a technology business or are connected to a wide network of professional organizations that frequently utilize technology.  

Financial Plan

Your financial plan should include your 5-year financial statement broken out both monthly or quarterly for the first year and then annually. Your financial statements include your income statement, balance sheet and cash flow statements.

Income Statement : an income statement is more commonly called a Profit and Loss statement or P&L. It shows your revenues and then subtracts your costs to show whether you turned a profit or not.

In developing your income statement, you need to devise assumptions. For example, will you take on one new client company at a time or multiple new client companies ? And will sales grow by 2% or 10% per year? As you can imagine, your choice of assumptions will greatly impact the financial forecasts for your business. As much as possible, conduct research to try to root your assumptions in reality.

Balance Sheets : Balance sheets show your assets and liabilities. While balance sheets can include much information, try to simplify them to the key items you need to know about. For instance, if you spend $50,000 on building out your technology business, this will not give you immediate profits. Rather it is an asset that will hopefully help you generate profits for years to come. Likewise, if a bank writes you a check for $50,000, you don’t need to pay it back immediately. Rather, that is a liability you will pay back over time.

Cash Flow Statement : Your cash flow statement will help determine how much money you need to start or grow your business, and make sure you never run out of money. What most entrepreneurs and business owners don’t realize is that you can turn a profit but run out of money and go bankrupt. 

In developing your Income Statement and Balance Sheets be sure to include several of the key costs needed in starting or growing a technology business:

• Cost of technology to be installed
• Cost of software and equipment
• Payroll or salaries paid to staff
• Business insurance
• Taxes and permits
• Legal expenses

Attach your full financial projections in the appendix of your plan along with any supporting documents that make your plan more compelling. For example, you might include your list of technology services, types of clients you will be targeting, and the areas your technology business will serve.  

Putting together a business plan for your technology business is a worthwhile endeavor. If you follow the template above, by the time you are done, you will truly be an expert. You will really understand the technology industry, your competition, and your customers. You will have developed a marketing plan and will really understand what it takes to launch and grow a successful technology business.  

Technology Business Plan FAQs

What is the easiest way to complete my technology business plan.

Growthink's Ultimate Business Plan Template allows you to quickly and easily complete your Technology Business Plan.

What is the Goal of a Business Plan's Executive Summary?

The goal of your Executive Summary is to quickly engage the reader. Explain to them the type of technology business you are operating and the status; for example, are you a startup, do you have a technology business that you would like to grow, or are you operating a chain of technology businesses?

Don’t you wish there was a faster, easier way to finish your Technology business plan?

OR, Let Us Develop Your Plan For You

Since 1999, Growthink has developed business plans for thousands of companies who have gone on to achieve tremendous success.   Click here to see how a Growthink business planning advisor can create your business plan for you.

Other Helpful Business Plan Articles & Templates

Creating an IT Strategy Communications Plan: 5 Keys to Success

This article is written from the perspective of an IT Strategy in higher education. However, many of the concepts can be applied to any strategy communications plan. Keep in mind however that the IT Strategic plan has an organization-wide impact. Because of this, the approach to communicating the IT strategy should be treated just like an organizational strategic plan.

Perhaps the largest barrier to the adoption of any strategic plan is belief in the plan. I’m a firm believer of “You can’t assign a strategic plan. People have to believe in it to achieve success.”

My favorite example of a successful strategy that employees believed in is Ford Motor Company’s 1982 “Quality is Job One” campaign. In 1982 the public believed that other auto manufacturers were building much better cars than Ford. To address this, Ford started a campaign/strategy to change that image. What most people don’t realize is that “Job 1” inside of ford refers to the first car of a new model that is produced. By stating “Quality is Job One”, Ford made it very clear to its employees that the first car off of the line (and implying every car thereafter) should be of high quality. This simple easy to understand strategy to improve quality resonated internally with employees and externally with customers.

Now not all of us are going to achieve the level of success in our IT strategy that Ford did. However, what we can do is ensure that we craft the message of our IT strategy so that it resonates with, and is easy to understand at all levels of the organization. Having a robust communications plan is vital to that effort.

Know Your Audiences and Stakeholders

Knowing your audience and making sure they get the right message is the most important and perhaps the most overlooked component of any communications plan. What’s important and what resonates to a Dean or VP, is very different than what’s important to a systems administrator. Your IT Strategy communications plan needs to include a message for both of these audiences (and many others).

Once you understand who your audience is, you need to know what to ask them for. A dynamic leader and good storyteller can get some initial interest in the plan. However, the first question that always gets asked is “what does this mean for me” Consider creating a table like the one below to help you understand how to answer that question.

Understand Your Communication Culture

After you understand your message, you need to consider how to communicate that message. Different audiences likely communicate via different methods. The next thing to identify is what are the successful methods of communication in your organization for each of the audiences. Take inventory of what tools/ media exist. Identify things like:

• Is there an organizational intranet? If so, which audience uses it the most.
• Do people actually read the organization-wide emails? If so, who do they come from?
• What physical communication tools exist (bulletin boards, break room postings, digital signage, etc.)
• Who prefers face to face conversations?
• What meetings should the plan be presented at?
• How do you get a message to your senior leaders?

Most importantly, have your elevator pitch memorized and available at all times for each of your audiences. Oftentimes you’ll find yourself in a lunch line, on public transportation (or actual elevator) with a VP or key decision maker. Have a pitch, or an ask ready to leverage when the opportunity presents itself. Even simple questions can go a long way. Here’s one example:

“Good afternoon Mrs. VP, I’m having trouble reaching the other VP’s to talk about our IT strategy. Do you have any suggestions on how I could reach them?”

You will likely get responses such as: “I’ve heard about that strategy, what’s the short version” or “Sure, reach out to my assistant and He’ll get you on our next VP meeting agenda.”

Most senior leaders are willing to help; however, they are extremely busy. Having a message ready for the right moment can really go a long way.

Identify Your Key Influencers

Every organization has the official reporting structure and has the informal one. There are people in every organization who seem to be better at getting things processed, and whose ideas get listened to. Know who these people are and understand their sphere of influence. Especially in higher education. Almost every academic department I’ve ever worked with has that one faculty member who is highly respected and seems to be able to go around organizational boundaries. Take inventory of these folks and seek to obtain their support for your IT Strategy. Sometimes you can even ask them to send out a strategy communication for you. People throughout your organization are much more likely to adopt your strategy if they see that their peers support it as well.

Obtain a Broad Range of Input

This is often the hardest one to do. An IT Strategy that gets adopted needs to have the support at all levels of the organization. The most effective way to ensure that people feel a part of the strategic plan is to let them help contribute to it. At the same time, however, you can’t have 200 people write a strategic plan. To gain input, establish your method of obtaining that input ahead of time. Consider how you can leverage things like:

• Town Hall meetings
• Organizational committees
• Individual Meetings
• Senior Staff Meetings
• Lunch and Learn sessions
• How you can recognize individuals for their contributions

As the final versions of your plan are rolled out, be sure to mention everyone that contributed. Not only will this give more weight to your plan, but it will create a broader sense of ownership. If you take a look at my previous article (5 Great Strategic Plans and Why you should read them) you’ll see most of these recognize all of the contributors.

Document Who is Communicating What, and When

The last thing to consider as part of your communications plan is who will communicate, what message via which communications media. Earlier we talked about our audiences and what message we need to get to them. I also discussed learning how they like to be communicated with. Consider building a communications plan chart like the one below:

New strategies for modern service assurance

86% of global IT leaders in a recent IDG survey find it very, or extremely, challenging to optimize their IT resources to meet changing business demands.

These postings are my own and do not necessarily represent BMC's position, strategies, or opinion.

See an error or have a suggestion? Please let us know by emailing [email protected] .

Business, Faster than Humanly Possible

BMC works with 86% of the Forbes Global 50 and customers and partners around the world to create their future. With our history of innovation, industry-leading automation, operations, and service management solutions, combined with unmatched flexibility, we help organizations free up time and space to become an Autonomous Digital Enterprise that conquers the opportunities ahead. Learn more about BMC ›

You may also like

Why DataOps Is Important to Future Success

Design Thinking: The Key To Building Customer-Driven Products

AWS re:Invent 2020: The Complete Guide

A Look at Trends in IT infrastructure and Operations for 2022

The Role of The Strategic Framework for IT

Business Process Management vs Business Process Automation: What’s The Difference?

About the author.

Joe Roush has managed information technology in a variety of roles in several different industries. After getting his start managing systems migrations in Banking and Manufacturing, he has spent the past 15 years providing IT services to small government and education. Joe currently serves as a senior IT leader in higher education, specializing in IT strategy and helping organizations understand the value of technology infrastructure in delivering organizational results.

6 Steps to Make a Successful IT Communication Plan

Posted 13 July, 2022 in IT and Technology , Cyber Security

IT teams may be employed more for their technical skills than their wordsmithing. But it’s important to be able to communicate IT messages effectively.

There are many different types of messages IT need to send – scheduled maintenance, unplanned outages, status updates, security reminders, new policies, and more. Getting this messaging wrong means users are left in the dark – which puts the business at risk.

In a report from HipLink , 91% of IT professionals believe poor incident communication increases downtime.

With so many messaging needs to manage, an IT communication plan is a must. But how do you get started? We’ll show you what to include, why it matters and how to make a communication plan template, plus share a full IT Communication Plan bundle for you to download .

1. What is an IT Communication Plan?

2. Why do you Need an IT Strategy?

3. What are the Best IT Communication Strategies?

4. Six Steps to Create an IT Communications Plan

5. Download Free Communications Plan Template

What is an IT Communication Plan?

An IT communication plan is a document that provides direction for the effective sharing of IT information with employees and stakeholders. It defines the goals, channels, audiences, best practices, and timelines for IT objectives.

The goal of a communication plan is to deliver important information to the right audiences in an optimal way for maximum readership. They are often developed in partnership with Internal Communications.

Your IT communications should be incorporated into your wider internal communications strategy . This ensures consistency of messaging and leverages the expertise of other teams.

Why do you Need an IT Strategy?

Having a formalized IT strategy allows IT Managers to successfully deliver important information that supports IT objectives. These objectives can include:

• 100% system uptime
• Reduced Helpdesk calls
• Zero data breaches
• 100% compliance with IT policies
• Increased user adoption of new systems

IT outages are a common headache for IT teams and can cost your business a lot too. The longer staff are unproductive, the bigger the hit to the bottom line. Keeping them informed reduces this disruption.

An IT strategy also helps improve your IT helpdesk communication , reducing the volume of tickets and allowing Helpdesk Managers to focus on higher priority tasks.

Dedicated messaging to improve cybersecurity is necessary to protect employees and your business. The digital landscape is constantly changing, and new risks arise daily. Employees need to stay sharp when it comes to their online behavior.

Digital transformation projects are a top priority for many organizations as they strive to gain competitive advantage in the aftermath of COVID. Well-constructed communications bring these projects to life for users and encourage them to buy in.

IT is a key support function for organizations, and as such the perception of end users is important. How easy do staff find dealing with IT? Are they satisfied with the outcomes? An IT strategy helps focus on delivering a positive end user experience .

With so much going on, IT teams will need to regularly update users and other stakeholders on IT projects and policies. Providing the right level of information at the right time can be achieved through an effective strategy.

What are the Best IT Communication Strategies?

When it comes to managing your IT communications, there are a few strategies it’s helpful to bear in mind.

• Deliver information quickly and effectively to all employees who need to know. Messages need to reach staff in a timely fashion – too late and they become meaningless. But make sure not to spam users – only send messages to staff for whom the content is relevant.  
• Provide regular reliable information so end users trust your IT comms. You want users to see your comms as the single source of truth. That way they’ll be more likely to habitually respond as you want.  
• Ensure inclusivity of comms so that messages reach every user regardless of where they’re working or what devices they’re using. This is especially important if your workforce operate from multiple locations or if some work in non-desk-based roles.  
• Construct and send messages in the best way to achieve high cut-through , readership and response. Different formats are more effective for different messages. Email may not be suitable for time-based messages or when you need staff to take action.

6 Steps to Create an IT Communications Plan

Follow these six steps to create an effective IT communications plan that is flexible to business needs and which hits your objectives. Then download the full guide with all the info and templates you need.

1. Define target audiences

The first step in communication planning is deciding who you need to speak to. These audiences may have very different communication needs.

For example, senior leadership will want a topline summary and how this affects wider business operations and performance. But employees or end users will only want the bare minimum of information which is directly relevant to their role.

By clearly defining your different audiences or stakeholders, you can then develop messaging targeted to what each needs to hear.

2. Set initiatives and goals

The next step is to identify initiatives from your corporate IT plan and set communication goals around them. These goals will often be related to what actions you need audiences to take for each initiative.

For example, a change to your data privacy policy requires 100% readership and compliance from users. However, deployment of new intranet software needs high user adoption to be successful.

Typical initiatives and related communication goals could be:

3. Select channels

With audiences and goals confirmed, you can then move onto selecting your communication channels.

Every communication tool has strengths and weaknesses. Some are good at fostering dialogue, but weaker at fast notifications. Others are useful for blanket coverage, but not for targeted messaging.

The following table compares the attributes and drawbacks of different channels:

It’s a good strategy to combine high visibility channels like pop-up alerts with passive channels such as screensavers or digital signage. Flooding a single channel like email with multiple message types on multiple subjects reduces effectiveness.

Consider which channels your audiences currently use. Do end users read them? Are they more effective for certain types of messages than others? Who owns these channels?

4. Create messages

Next, it’s time to create your messages. What information you need to convey, and how you want users to respond, will determine the best way to construct your messages.

In general, the more urgent or important the message, the shorter and snappier your communications should be. Unplanned system outages or a cybersecurity breach need to get employee attention immediately – the snappier the better. Whereas digital transformation updates need to get users interested – requiring more detail and visuals.

Here’s some examples for common IT communication needs:

It’s a good strategy to create templated messages for common types of communication in advance. When you have pre-planned messages you don’t have to spend time writing them from scratch during the heat of an incident.

For example, here’s some templates for scheduled maintenance messages .

5. Confirm responsibilities and logistics

Now it’s time to nail down the details of your communication plan. These are the logistics of what happens at various stages, who has ownership of each, what timeframes are involved and what contingencies are in place if something goes awry.

Some of the details you should include at this step are:

• Role responsibilities – Which staff members are involved and what their level of involvement is.  
• Other departments involved – Which other departments must be involved at different stages. For example, HR if they ‘own’ any of the communication channels you plan to use.  
• Timing – When certain types of messages need to be sent and with what urgency. For example, unplanned outage alerts must be sent ASAP after the incident is recognized; awareness messaging should be sent once per month for reinforcement (here’s how to create effective cybersecurity awareness campaigns ).  
• Contingencies – What backup is available if any involved staff are away (usually another staff member in the same team) or which alternative channel should be used if the preferred isn’t available.

6. Measure and review

The final step is to track your communication performance to determine the effectiveness and identify areas for improvement. Use data from channel analytics to see which messages are being read and which are being ignored.

Typical data you should look at are:

• Message success – are your messages being delivered?  
• Open rates – are your messages being seen by users?  
• Readership rates – are users skimming (spending 3-5 seconds), reading (spending 10 or more seconds) or ignoring (spending 1 or no seconds) your messages?  
• Clickthrough rates – are users taking action by clicking links or otherwise engaging with your messages?

Gather user feedback to find out if you’re sending information in the best way for staff to absorb. An online staff survey is an effective tool for this, allowing you to collect and export responses.

Use benchmark data to track communications performance over time. For example, are you seeing a reduction in Helpdesk calls after implementing your new IT comms strategy?

Regularly audit your overall channel mix to gauge if you’re using too many channels or too few. If you need to introduce more, use this IT communication partner checklist .

Download Free Communications Plan Template

Get all the tools you need in our IT Communication Plan bundle. Complete the form to download your:

• Full Guide to IT Communication Planning ( pdf )
• IT Communication Quarterly Calendar ( pdf )
• IT Communication Partner Checklist ( editable pdf )
• IT Communications Schedule Template ( editable xls )

Share This on:

IT and Technology Cyber Security

More blogs by Michael Hartland

Michael Hartland is Content Marketing Manager at SnapComms - the market-leading provider of digital employee engagement solutions. Michael's most happy when writing. The beauty of language and the power of communication are his passions.

Browse by Topic

• Internal Communications (104)
• Human Resources (69)
• Hospitals and Healthcare (23)
• Strategy (17)
• Health and Wellness (16)
• IT and Technology (16)
• Cyber Security (13)
• Leadership (12)
• Culture (11)
• Employee Engagement (10)
• Change Comms (8)
• Compliance and Ethics (7)
• Product Insights (7)
• Financial Services (5)
• Crisis Comms (4)
• Digital Transformation (4)
• Employee Experience (4)
• Onboarding (3)
• Contact Center (2)
• Education (2)

Best Practice, Tips and Free Tools

All you need to supercharge your comms - direct to your Inbox

Popular Blogs

Explore more helpful articles.

IT and Technology

7 IT Help Desk Templates For Common Message Types

How to manage scheduled maintenance messages (with examples).

Cyber Security

4 Cyber Security Notification Templates (+ guide)

Got any questions? We're here to help. 

• SnapComms on Facebook
• SnapComms on LinkedIn
• SnapComms on Youtube
• SnapComms on Twitter

Privacy Policy | Cookie Policy | DPA | Terms and Conditions | Trust Center | Do Not Sell

• Desktop Pop-up Alert
• Desktop Scrolling Ticker
• One-click Alert
• Login Screen Alert
• Corporate Screensaver
• Corporate Wallpaper
• Corporate Lockscreen
• SMS Notification
• Emergency Alert
• Digital Signage
• Email Notification
• Extended Reports
• RSVP Invitation
• Video Alert
• Skin Editor
• Mobile Client App
• Technical Support
• Professional Services
• Annual Maintenance
• Engineering
• Hospitality
• Manufacturing
• Oil and Gas
• Change Management
• Email Overload
• Employee Engagement
• Emergency Communications
• Remote Communications
• Compliance Communications
• Internal Communication System
• Crisis Communications
• HR Communications
• Product Overview
• System Requirements
• Documentation
• Templates Library
• Knowledge Base
• AD Integration
• SSO Integration
• API Integration
• Automated Incident Notifications
• MS Teams Integration
• Case Studies
• Become a Partner
• Our Partners

IT Communication Strategy And Plan: 10 Essential Tips

Caroline Duncan : Nov 10, 2021 11:01:00 AM

The IT department is the backbone of the modern workplace:  without technology, most businesses wouldn’t be able to function effectively, if at all. Unfortunately, in many organizations, the only time people think about the IT department and what it does is when something isn’t working.

An IT communication plan and strategy can help you increase awareness of the department’s role within the organization and any projects, initiatives, or other issues you would like people to know about.

Why an IT communication strategy and plan are important

When you communicate regularly, it ensures that people know what is going on. Too often in large organizations, separate work teams can become “information silos”, which means other parts of the organization don’t know about their work.

Benefits of a communications plan in IT include:

• Keeping people informed about any issues that might impact them, such as maintenance and upgrades or status updates when there is an unplanned outage.
• Explaining your costs to the organization.
• Sharing information about new IT projects and initiatives.
• Sharing success stories, such as when your team has overcome a challenging situation and found a solution.
• Educating your workforce on cybersecurity issues.
• Hints, tips and advice that can help reduce the more regular call types you get to the help desk.

While this is all good for the IT department itself, it also benefits the company overall when employees know what resources and help they have access to.

Download 9 most useful IT outage templates

Tips for a successful IT communication strategy

An IT communication plan is a document you can follow to deliver the information you need to your organization’s people. These tips will help you to communicate effectively:

1. Use plain language

Remember that the people you are communicating with are probably not IT experts and a lot of technical jargon you are used to might not make any sense to them at all. This is something that often hampers good communication in the IT industry. All your communications should be written in plain language. It should be clear, concise and easy to understand.

2. Identify and understand your audience

Every organization is different. There are different audience types within an organization, including an audience that encompasses every employee. Other audience segments might include individual work teams, users of particular software programs, or people located in particular office buildings or geographic locations.   It’s important to understand who your audience(s) are so you can communicate with them appropriately.

It’s also good to have different audiences because not everything you send will be relevant to the entire organization. When you send too many irrelevant communications (for example, providing information about a software outage that only 10% of staff need to know about), you run the risk of people tuning out to all of your communications because they assume it won’t be useful to them.

3. Be prepared for both reactive and proactive communications

Proactive communications are your “good news stories” and other helpful hints, tips and advice that you regularly send to keep people informed about the department and its work. As part of your IT communication plan, you can create a content calendar to ensure you regularly send things out. (Take a look at this internal communications editorial calendar ).

Reactive communications are what is implied in the name: communications about events you need to react to. This could be outages, maintenance, cyber threats and other issues. These are communication updates you need to send to employees in the organization on an as-needed basis.

4. Determine the best times to communicate

The IT department is of course just one part of the organization. Other parts of the organization may also be regularly communicating with everyone, for example, HR or the internal communications team. Work out who else is communicating and get an idea of when and how they communicate so you can avoid scheduling conflicts and not overwhelm the workforce by sending too much information to them at the same time.

hbspt.cta._relativeUrls=true;hbspt.cta.load(2607633, '5069c8e2-ab41-4c12-be05-2c66b3d0562d', {"useNewLoader":"true","region":"na1"});

5. be transparent in your communication.

When you have to communicate about outages and other problems, you need to ensure that your communications are honest and transparent. Even if people are upset and angry, you’ll only make things worse if you try to placate them or don’t tell the truth about what is going on.

6. Use a variety of communication channels

Don’t rely on email to get your information to employees: email overload is a real issue in many organizations and it means that important information can be lost or ignored. Specialist software such as DeskAlerts is a perfect IT communications solution: it has many different channels that can send messages in different ways. Pop-up notifications , for example,  can be sent to desktops to let people know about outages and other issues in real-time. You can also use a scrolling ticker to keep people informed about the ongoing status of an issue.

Baxalta is a huge biopharmaceutical company with more than 16 thousand employees worldwide and was formerly part of Baxter International.

The company looked for a reliable way to inform employees about key system outages and other downtimes. Baxalta’s IT department implemented DeskAlerts for employees in Austria, placing the software on more than three thousand employees’ computers to solve this issue.

Baxalta has been using DeskAlerts as its primary channel for communicating critical information to these employees , with the IT department using the system to deliver targeted notifications about system outages and recoveries as well as planned outages. Active Directory integration enables the tea to target the notifications only to the employees who will be directly affected, ensuring that irrelevant communications are reduced.

Feedback from Baxalta is that DeskAlerts was easy to use, had a user-friendly interface and helped save time on employee training . They also appreciated the system’s overall flexibility and the ability to customize it to suit their needs.

7. Enable two-way communication

For internal communication to be truly successful, having a way to get feedback from employees is vital. There are many ways to do this, including surveys and polls, face-to-face meetings, workshops, focus groups and more. 

You can also test knowledge as a way of making your communications interactive; for example, deliver a ransomware quiz to employees to see if they understand what it is.  

8. Make use of your organization’s key influencers

Within any organization, there are usually some individuals who have more sway and clout than others – these are the managers and other leaders that people listen to and can help to influence decision making. Identify who these people are in your company and approach them to help you get your message out among colleagues in other work teams.

9. Use visual content

You don’t always need to deliver written text to get your message across. Visuals such as videos, images, and infographics can be a great way to get people’s attention, particularly when conveying complex information. Corporate screensavers , wallpapers and digital signage can enhance your internal communications campaigns and reinforce your messaging.

10. Evaluate the success of your communication

Every IT communication plan or strategy should include a way to measure success. Analytics, for example, are a good way of gathering quantitative data such as reach.

But when you’re communicating with others, it is hard to know if what you are sending is the right information they need to achieve success. This is where qualitative data is needed too. Send quick surveys to your employees via DeskAlerts to determine if they are satisfied with the communications they are receiving and if they are helpful.

What should your IT communications plan look like?

Your IT communication plan shouldn’t be overly complicated. It should be a straightforward document that immediately lets people know what needs to be done, how it needs to be done when it needs to happen and who has responsibility for the task.

Here is a sample you can use as a guide for setting out  your IT communication plans:

IT communications plan: first quarter of 2022

Improving communication from the IT department will help you build and boost relationships within your organization and help your stakeholders better understand your services. At the end of the day, this can only help make your job a lot easier.

What is a communication plan in IT?

An IT communication plan sets out how the IT department in an organization will keep everyone informed about important information and issues that relate to IT infrastructure, systems, software, hardware, protocols and policies. It is essentially a roadmap that IT staff can follow to ensure that they are providing regular, relevant information to the right people in a timely manner, using a range of internal communications channels to ensure that the plan is effective.

How to make a communication strategy in IT?

Approaching the creation of a communication strategy in IT is not unlike creating other strategic business documents or other communications plans.  You should factor in the following:

•       Understanding the audience you are communicating to and their needs (they may not always be technologically literate)
•       Determining what you want to achieve and tailoring tasks, messages and channel delivery to suit
•       Determining who is responsible for creating and delivering IT communications content
•       Establishing time frames for content delivery.

Updated in 2021.

 Send urgent notifications to any corporate devices: PCs, phones, tablets, etc.

The high visibility combined with our 100% delivery rate guarantee. Bypass information overload. Deliver key information even if the computer is on screensaver mode, locked or sleeping.

Posts by Tag

• Alert Software (43)
• Best Practices (13)
• Business Continuity (8)
• Change Management (23)
• Communication in finance (6)
• Communications Feedback Solutions (27)
• Construction Industry (5)
• Corporate Communication Strategy (29)
• Corporate Communication Tools (29)
• Corporate compliance (7)
• Corporate lockscreen (3)
• Corporate screensaver (4)
• Corporate wallpaper (5)
• COVID-19 (31)
• Crisis Communications (7)
• Cybersecurity (25)
• Desktop Alerts (16)
• Desktop Alerts Software (28)
• Digital signage (6)
• duty of care (4)
• Education (11)
• Email overload (17)
• Emergency Alert System (71)
• Emergency communications (21)
• Employee Communication (25)
• Employee Communication Channels (15)
• Employee Engagement (43)
• Employee quiz (2)
• Employee survey (4)
• Executive communications (6)
• Government Industry (6)
• Health and Safety Training (3)
• Healthcare (25)
• Helpdesk (26)
• Hospitality (1)
• HR Communications (58)
• Improve Corporate Communication (430)
• Internal Communication Best Practices (121)
• Internal Communication Channels (29)
• Internal Communication Plan (12)
• Internal Communication Strategy (27)
• Internal Communication Tools (51)
• Internal Communications (49)
• Internal marketing communications (4)
• Internet Security (41)
• IT communications (17)
• IT Issues (24)
• IT Outage (23)
• Manufacturing (5)
• Mass notification (28)
• Mobile App (2)
• MS Teams (2)
• New Release (1)
• Organizational culture (10)
• Pharmaceutical industry (1)
• Pop-up alerts (7)
• RSVP alert (3)
• Safety Culture (5)
• Security Awareness Training (18)
• SMS Notifications (1)
• Staff training (5)
• Strategy-Internal Communication Tools (2)
• Telecom (1)
• Video Alert (3)
• Workplace Safety (1)

12 min read

Motivational Messages for Employees From Managers

IT Onboarding Checklist For New Hires and How To Compile It Correctly?

Developing a consistent process to onboard new employees into your organization ensures that from the very start they feel as though they are part of...

What is Alyssa’s Law and How Can DeskAlerts Instruments Help Schools?

Many states across the USA have now implemented “Alyssa’s Law” to help improve emergency response times in public elementary and secondary schools....

Advisory boards aren’t only for executives. Join the LogRocket Content Advisory Board today →

• Product Management
• Solve User-Reported Issues
• Find Issues Faster
• Optimize Conversion and Adoption

How to write a communication plan (with template and examples)

Communication is one of the product manager’s primary responsibilities. After all, a PM can’t do their job without effectively communicating risks, dependencies, and changes.

In small companies, communication is somewhat more intuitive and often easier to manage. The problems begin to appear when the company grows.

A bigger company means more teams, more stakeholders, more initiatives, and more of everything. Beyond scale-ups, communication often becomes either too chaotic or too infrequent.

In cases like that, having a robust communication plan can be a life saver. In this guide, we’ll demonstrate how to write a communication plan in six easy steps. You can also use our free communication plan template , which contains both a blank spreadsheet for you to fill out and a practical example to help you get started.

What is a communication plan?

A communication plan is an inspectable artifact that describes what information must be communicated as well as to whom, by whom, when, where, and via what medium that information is to be communicated. In addition, a communication plan outlines how communications are tracked and analyzed.

A communication plan can take various forms. For example, it might take the form of a(n):

• Weekly checklist
• Spreadsheet
• Automated Trello board

In general, a communication plan should be whatever works for you and your team, as long as it allows you to inspect and adapt your approach to communicating with others.

Benefits of a communication plan

Investing time in creating and maintaining a communication plan brings many benefits. A communication plan serves as a(n):

Checklist and reminder

Inspectable artifact, alignment with stakeholders.

Who hasn’t forgotten to inform some critical stakeholder about a recent change/discovery?

Product management is such a fast-paced and dynamic profession that it’s very easy to let small details slip. Unfortunately, it’s these small details that often matter the most.

A written communication plan serves as a checklist that ensures minute details don’t slip too often. Whenever something relevant happens, you can easily refer to your communication plan to double-check whether you’ve connected with everyone who needs to be in the loop.

A tangible communication plan allows product managers to slow down, inspect, and adapt their current processes.

Whenever there’s a communication mishap, they can review what led to it and adjust their approach to communication. A concrete plan makes a vague and sometimes intimidating term such as “communication” more tangible.

Over 200k developers and product managers use LogRocket to create better digital experiences

A communication plan, when done well, brings alignment and facilitates input from other stakeholders. It also lays out expectations of how communication is being handled and executed.

If stakeholders feel they aren’t getting all the relevant information, they can quickly check the communication plan to see what they are missing and what is lacking in the communication process that is causing them to miss that information. If they find the communication inadequate, they can share their feedback with the communication plan owner.

It’s easier to facilitate feedback and alignment when something is on paper.

How to create a communication plan in 6 steps

As mentioned above, there are various ways to create a communication plan.

A simple way to write a communication plan is to answer six questions:

• What type of information do you produce?
• Who should receive that information?
• How often should they receive it?
• What channels are most appropriate for this type of information?
• When is communication done for that type of information?
• Who should make sure it happens?

1. What type of information do you produce?

Start by reviewing what information you produce and process.

If you manage roadmaps , you probably produce a lot of information regarding roadmap changes, delays, and anything else that may relate to roadmaps.

If you manage releases, you also produce information regarding the release progress, stage, and anything else that related to releases.

Capture it all.

To make it easier, start with the broader, more general concepts. And if you notice the need for more precision, split them into more detailed communication positions.

2. Who should receive that information?

For a given type of information you produce or process, who should receive it? These are usually people who are:

• Direct stakeholders
• Dependent on the initiative
• Contributing to the initiative

Investing some time in defining the receipts has two main benefits.

First, it ensures you don’t miss a critical person in your communication flow, but it also helps you answer the question of who is not interested in certain information. Over-communication creates noise and should be avoided.

3. How often should they receive it?

You should identify the frequency of updates being sent out depending on the information being shared and which stakeholders are included. Should it be daily, weekly, biweekly, monthly?

You probably won’t nail it at first, but that’s OK. What’s important is to search for a sweet spot between over-communication and under-communication.

Although it might seem excessive at first, finding the right balance will be increasingly important as the amount of and need for communication grows over time.

4. What channels are most appropriate for this type of information?

What medium is most suitable for a given type of information?

For example, it would be silly to inform someone about a mission-critical dependency in a comment under a Jira ticket. At the same time, you shouldn’t spam other people’s Slack with every minor change.

Before sending out an update, ask yourself:

• Where would people seek such information?
• How fast should it reach the audience?
• How critical is it?
• Is it a one-sided update or a potential conversation starter?

The answers to these questions will help you find the best channel for the given information piece.

5. When is communication done for that type of information?

Many people fall into the concept trap that once you send out a message, your communication responsibility is over. This is not always the case.

If you send a company-wide FYI update, then yes, your job is probably completed when you press send, but what if you have roadmap changes that impact multiple teams. Shouldn’t you be making sure everyone on those teams are informed?

In cases like that, you can’t say you are done just because you’ve sent a message. You should chase all key stakeholders and ensure that they have read and understood your message to avoid any misconceptions.

Let’s face it: messages sometimes slip. Your job isn’t to send messages, but to ensure everyone is on the same page. It’s not the same thing.

I’m a fan of having a simple definition of done for communication items. Sometimes, it’ll just mean pushing an update. Other times, it might mean getting a signature of approval from another stakeholder.

6. Who should make it happens?

Last but not least, if it’s everyone’s responsibility to make sure communication happens, then it’s no one’s responsibility.

Although the whole team should be responsible for ensuring effective communication, I believe in having a dedicated owner for a given communication stream. The owner can be permanent or rotate every sprint.

If you have communication owners in place, the chance of communication actually taking place increases dramatically.

Communication plan example

Let’s take a look at an example of a communication plan created using the framework I just outlined:

This communication plan can now serve as an artifact for alignment, process improvement, and double-checking if everything is communicated as needed.

Since some of the items in the communication plan happen as needed, it’s imperative to review the artifact on a regular basis. Otherwise, details are bound to slip sooner or later.

Communication plan template

To make it easy to get started with creating your own communication plan, we’ve created a communication plan template for you. Click File > Make a copy to customize the template.

When you start, ask yourself:

• What you want to communicate
• By what channel
• When you consider the communication as done
• Who should own the given communication item

Although it may lack in the beginning, use it as an inspectable artifact to improve your communication approach every sprint. I promise you, it’ll make your job as a product manager significantly easier.

LogRocket generates product insights that lead to meaningful action

Get your teams on the same page — try LogRocket today.

Share this:

• Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
• #collaboration and communication

Stop guessing about your digital experience with LogRocket

Recent posts:.

Crafting a successful product launch strategy: Key tips and steps

A launch strategy builds anticipation, maximizes initial sales, and establishes a strong market presence early on.

Leader Spotlight: Having a bias for action, with Anish Chadda

Anish Chadda discusses the importance of having a “bias for action” — iterating quickly instead of focusing on creating a perfect prototype.

DSDM: The dynamic systems development method

The dynamic system development method (DSDM) was first released in 1994 as a software development method to provide some discipline to RAD.

Leader Spotlight: Enabling a vision-led product mindset, with David Krell

David Krell, VP of Product at Going, talks about the fallacy that PMs have to be in a position of authority to do vision-led work.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Tech at the edge: Trends reshaping the future of IT and business

It is easy to become numb to the onslaught of new technologies hitting the market, each with its own promise of changing (more often “revolutionizing”) the business world. But our analysis of some of the more meaningful tech trends lays out a convincing case that something significant is happening. 1 Michael Chui, Roger Roberts, and Lareina Yee, “ McKinsey Technology Trends Outlook 2022 ,” McKinsey, August 24, 2022.

These tech trends are generally accelerating the primary characteristics that have defined the digital era: granularity, speed, and scale. But it’s the magnitude of these changes—in computing power, bandwidth, and analytical sophistication—that is opening the door to new innovations, businesses, and business models.

The emergence of cloud and 5G , for example, exponentially increases compute power and network speeds that can enable greater innovation. Developments in the metaverse of augmented and virtual reality open the doors to virtual R&D via digital twins , for example, and immersive learning. Advances in AI, machine learning, and software 2.0 (machine-written code) bring a range of new services and products, from autonomous vehicles to connected homes, well within reach.

Much ink has been spilled on identifying tech trends, but less attention has been paid to the implications of those changes. To help understand how management will need to adapt in the face of these technology trends in the next three to five years, we spoke to business leaders and leading thinkers on the topic. We weren’t looking for prognostications; we wanted to explore realistic scenarios, their implications, and what senior executives might do to get ready.

The discussions pinpointed some broad, interrelated shifts, such as how technology’s radically increasing power is exerting a centrifugal force on the organization, pushing innovation to expert networks at the edges of the company; how the pace and proliferation of these innovations calls for radical new approaches to continuous learning built around skills deployed at points of need; how these democratizing forces mean that IT can no longer act as a centralized controller of technology deployment and operations but instead needs to become a master enabler and influencer; and how these new technologies are creating more data about, and touchpoints with, customers, which is reshaping the boundaries of trust and requiring a much broader understanding of a company’s security responsibilities.

1. Innovation at the edge

Key tech trends.

We estimate that 70 percent of companies will employ hybrid or multicloud management technologies, tools, and processes . 2 “ The top trends in tech ,” McKinsey, June 15, 2021. At the same time, 5G will deliver network speeds that are about ten times faster than current speeds on 4G LTE networks, 3 Irina Ivanova, “What consumers need to know about this week’s AT&T–Verizon 5G rollout,” CBS News, January 20, 2022. with expectations of speeds that are up to 100 times faster with 40 times faster latency. 4 “5G speed: 5G vs. 4G performance compared,” Tom’s Guide, June 1, 2021. By 2024, more than 50 percent of user touches will be augmented by AI-driven speech, written word, or computer-vision algorithms , 5 “ The top trends in tech ,” June 15, 2021. while global data creation is projected to grow to more than 180 zettabytes by 2025, up from 64.2 zettabytes in 2020. 6 “Amount of data created, consumed, and stored 2010–2025,” Statista Research Department, May 23, 2022. The low-code development platform market‘s compound annual growth rate (CAGR) is projected at about 30 percent through 2030. 7 “Global $187 billion low-code development platform market to 2030,” GlobeNewswire, November 10, 2020.

Shift: Innovation develops around personal networks of experts at the porous edge of the organization and is supported by capabilities that scale the benefits across the business.

These technologies promise access to virtually unlimited compute power and massive data sets, as well as a huge leap in bandwidth at low cost, making it cheaper and easier to test, launch, and scale innovations quickly. The resulting acceleration in innovation will mean that companies can expect more disruptions from more sources. Centralized strategic and innovation functions cannot hope to keep pace on their own. Companies will need to be much more involved in networks outside their organizations to spot, invest in, and even acquire promising opportunities.

Corporate venture-capital (VC) funds with centralized teams have looked to find and fund innovation, but their track record has been spotty, often because the teams lack the requisite skills and are simply too far removed from the constantly evolving needs of individual business units. Instead, companies will need to figure out how to tap their front lines, particularly business domain experts and technologists, to enable them to act, in effect, as the business’s VC arm. That’s because the people who are writing code and building solutions are often well plugged into strong external networks in their fields and have the expertise to evaluate new developments. One pharma company, for example, taps its own expert researchers in various fields, such as gene expression, who know well the people outside the company who are leaders in the field.

While companies will need to create incentives and opportunities for engineers to build up and engage with their networks, the key focus must be on empowering teams so they can spend their allocated budget as they see fit—for example, experimenting and failing without penalty (within boundaries) and deciding on technologies to meet their goals (within prescribed guidelines).

The IT organization of the future can play an important role in building up a scaling capability to make that innovation work for the business, something that has traditionally been a challenge. Individual developers or small teams working fast don’t tend to naturally think about how to scale an application. That issue is likely to be exacerbated as nontechnical users working in pockets across organizations use low-code/no-code (LC/NC) applications to design and build programs with point-and-click or pull-down-menu interfaces.

One pharma company has taken this idea to heart by giving local business units the flexibility to run with a nonstandard idea when it has proven to be better than what the company is already doing. In return for that flexibility, the business unit must commit to helping the rest of the organization use the new idea, and IT builds it into the company’s standards.

In considering how this scaling capability might work, companies could, for example, assign advanced developers to “productize” applications by refactoring code so they can scale. IT leadership can provide tools and platforms, reusable-code libraries that are easily accessible, and flexible, standards-based architecture so that innovations can be scaled across the business more easily.

Questions for leadership

• What incentives will best encourage engineers and domain experts to develop, maintain, and tap into their networks?
• What processes are in place for tracking and managing VC activity at the edge?
• What capabilities do you need to identify innovation opportunities and “industrialize” the best ones so they can be shared across the organization?

For more on how to empower workers at the edge, see “ Tech companies innovate at the edge. Legacy companies can too ,” in Harvard Business Review.

Would you like to learn more about McKinsey Digital ?

2. a perpetual-learning culture.

Advances in AI, machine learning, robotics, and other technologies have increased the pace of change tenfold . By 2025, we estimate that 50 billion devices will be connected to the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), while 70 percent of manufacturers are expected to be using digital twins regularly (by 2022). 8 “ The top trends in tech ,” June 15, 2021. Some 70 percent of new applications will use LC/NC technologies by 2025, up from less than 25 percent in 2020. 9 “Gartner says cloud will be the centerpiece of new digital experiences,” Gartner, November 10, 2021. The global metaverse revenue opportunity could approach $800 billion in 2024, up from about $500 billion in 2020. 10 Bloomberg Intelligence, “Metaverse may be $800 billion market, next tech platform,” Bloomberg, December 1, 2021. This proliferation of technological innovations means we can expect to experience more progress in the next decade than in the past 100 years combined, according to entrepreneur and futurist Peter Diamandis. 11 Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler, The Future Is Faster than You Think: How Converging Technologies Are Transforming Business, Industries, and Our Lives , New York: Simon & Schuster, 2020.

Shift: Tech literacy becomes core to every role, requiring learning to be continuous and built at the level of individual skills that are deployed at the point of need.

With the pace and proliferation of technologies pushing innovation to the edge of the organization, businesses need to be ready to incorporate the most promising options from across the front lines. This will create huge opportunities, but only for those companies that develop true tech intelligence through a perpetual-learning culture. The cornerstone of this effort includes training all levels of personnel, from “citizen developers” working with easy-to-use LC/NC tools or in entirely new environments such as the metaverse, to full-stack developers and engineers, who will need to continually evolve their skills to keep up with changing technologies. We’re already seeing situations where poorly trained employees use LC/NC to churn out suboptimal products.

While there will always be a need for more formalized paths for foundational learning, we anticipate an acceleration in the shift from teaching curricula periodically to continuous learning that can deliver varying technical skills across the entire organization. In practice, that will mean orienting employee development around delivering skills. This requires breaking down a capability into its smallest sets of composite skills. One large tech company, for example, created 146,000 skills data points for the 1,200 technical skills it was assessing.

The key point is that these skills “snippets”—such as a block of code or a video of a specific negotiating tactic—need to be integrated into the workflow so that they’re delivered when needed. This might be called a “LearnOps” approach, where learning is built into the operations. This integration mentality is established at Netflix, where data scientists partner directly with product managers, engineering teams, and other business units to design, execute, and learn from experiments. 12 Netflix Technology Blog , “Experimentation is a major focus of data science across Netflix,” blog entry by Martin Tingley et al., January 11, 2022.

As important as being able to deploy learning is building a learning culture by making continuous learning expected and easy to do. The way top engineers learn can be instructive. This is a community that is highly aware of the need to keep their skills up to date. They have ingrained habits of sharing code, and they gravitate to projects where they can learn. One advantage of using open source, for example, is the built-in community that constantly updates and reviews code. In the same spirit, we’re seeing companies budget extra time to allow people to try new tools or technologies when they’re building a product. Other companies are budgeting for “learning buffers” to allow for setbacks in product development that teams can learn from. 13 “ The big boost: How incumbents successfully scale their new businesses ,” McKinsey, August 27, 2020.

Netflix, which makes broad, open, and deliberate information sharing a core value, built the Netflix experimentation platform as an internal product that acts as a repository of solutions for future teams to reuse. It has a product manager and innovation road map, with the goal of making experimentation a simple and integrated part of the product life cycle. 14 Netflix Technology Blog , “Netflix: A culture of learning,” blog entry by Martin Tingley et al., January 25, 2022.

To support this kind of continuous learning and experimentation, companies will need to accept mistakes. The art will be in limiting the impact of potentially costly mistakes, such as the loss or misuse of customer data. IT will need to architect protocols, incentives, and systems to encourage good behaviors and reduce bad ones. Many companies are beginning to adopt practices such as automated testing to keep mistakes from happening in the first place ; creating spaces where mistakes won’t affect other applications or systems, such as isolation zones in cloud environments ; and building in resiliency protocols.

• Do you have a list of the most important skills your business needs?
• What is the minimum level of learning needed for advanced users of analytics and manipulators of data?
• How do you track what people are learning and whether that learning is effective and translating into better performance?

3. IT as a service

It is estimated that the global cloud microservices platform market will generate $4.2 billion in revenue by 2028, up from $952 million in 2020. 15 Cloud microservice platform market report , Research Dive, November 2021. GitHub has more than 200 million code repositories and expects 100 million software developers by 2025. 16 Paul Krill, “GitHub expects more than 100 million software developers by 2025,” InfoWorld, December 3, 2020. Nearly 90 percent of developers already use APIs. 17 Christina Voskoglou, “APIs have taken over software development,” Nordic APIs, October 27, 2020. Software 2.0 creates new ways of writing software and reduces complexity. Software sourced by companies from cloud-service platforms, open repositories, and software as a service (SaaS) is growing at a CAGR of 27.5 percent from 2021 to 2028. 18 Software as a service (SaaS) market, 2021–2028 , Fortune Business Insights, January 2022.

Shift: IT becomes the enabler of product innovation by serving small, interoperable blocks of code.

When innovation is pushed to the edge and a perpetual-learning culture permeates an organization, the role of IT shifts dramatically. IT can’t support this dynamic environment by sticking to its traditional role as a controlling entity managing technology at the center. The premium will now be on IT’s ability to enable innovation, requiring a shift in its traditional role as protector of big tech assets to a purveyor of small blocks of code. The gold standard of IT effectiveness will be its ability to help people stitch together snippets of code into a useful product.

We are already seeing what that might look like. Employees at G&J Pepsi-Cola Bottlers with little to no experience at software development created an app that examines images of a store shelf to identify the number and type of bottles on it, then automatically restocks it based on historic trends. 19 Adam Burden, “Low code/no code could reshape business innovation,” VentureBeat, February 5, 2022. One pharmaceutical company grew its low-code platform base from eight users to 1,400 in just one year . Business users outside of IT are now building applications with thousands of monthly sessions. 20 Shivam Srivastava, Kartik Trehan, Dilip Wagle, and Jane Wang, “ Developer Velocity: How software excellence fuels business performance ,” McKinsey, April 20, 2020. Companies that empower “citizen developers” score 33 percent higher on innovation compared with bottom-quartile companies that don’t provide that level of support, according to a McKinsey survey. 21 Shivam Srivastava, Kartik Trehan, Dilip Wagle, and Jane Wang, “ Developer Velocity: How software excellence fuels business performance ,” McKinsey, April 20, 2020.

These developments point toward much more of a “buffet” approach to technology, where IT builds useful blocks of reusable code, sometimes assembles them into specific products, and makes them available through a user-friendly cataloging system for the business to use to create the products it needs. IT provides guiderails, such as API standards and directives on the environments in which the code might be most useful; protects the most sensitive information, such as customer data and financial records; and tracks their adoption. This tracking capability will become particularly crucial as bots, AI, algorithms, and APIs proliferate. Transparency isn’t sufficient. IT will need to make sense of all the activity through advanced tech performance and management capabilities and the development of new roles, such as data diagnosticians and bot managers.

This IT-as-a-service approach puts the product at the center of the operating model, requiring a commitment to organizing IT around product management . Some companies have been moving in this direction. But reaching the scale needed to support fast-paced and more diffuse innovation will require a deeper commitment to product owners, working with leaders in the business side of the house, to run teams with real P&L responsibility. Many organizations, from traditional enterprises to digital natives, have found that putting in place product leaders who set overall product and portfolio strategy, drive execution, and empower product owners to drive innovation aligned with business outcomes and P&L metrics can increase the return on the funding that flows to technology delivery and quicken the pace of innovation.

• Do you have a vision for how the role of the IT organization will change to enable democratization of technology?
• How will you elevate the role of the technology product manager, and do you have a road map for developing that role?
• What systems will you need to put in place to manage and track the use, reuse, and performance of code?

McKinsey Technology Trends Outlook 2022

4. expanded trust boundaries.

It was estimated that almost 100 percent of biometrics-capable devices (such as smartphones) will be using biometrics for transactions by 2022. 22 “Usage of biometric technology in transactions with mobile devices worldwide 2016–2022”, Statista Research Department, June 13, 2022. The effectiveness of these technologies has advanced dramatically, with the best facial-identification algorithms having improved 50 times since 2014. 23 William Crumpler, “How accurate are facial recognition systems—and why does it matter?” Center for Strategies and International Studies (CSIS), April 14, 2020. These developments are contributing to profound unease in the relationship between technology and consumers of technology. The Pearson Institute and the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows that “about two-thirds of Americans are very or extremely concerned about hacking that involves their personal information, financial institutions, government agencies, or certain utilities.” 24 Chuck Brooks, “More alarming cybersecurity stats for 2021!” Forbes , October 24, 2021.

Shift: Trust expands to cover a broader array of stakeholder concerns and become an enterprise-wide responsibility.

These enormous shifts in technology power and capacity will create many more touchpoints with customers and an exponential wave of new data about customers. Even as IT’s role within the organization becomes more that of an enabler, the expanding digital landscape means that IT must broaden its trust capabilities around security, privacy, and cyber . To date, consumers have largely embraced the convenience that technology provides, from ordering a product online to adjusting the temperature in their homes remotely to monitoring their health through personal devices. In exchange for these conveniences, consumers have traditionally been willing to provide some personal information. But a steady undercurrent of privacy and trust concerns around these ever-more-sophisticated conveniences is raising the stakes on the broad topic of trust. Consumers are becoming more aware of their identity rights, making decisions based on values, and demanding the ethical use of data and responsible AI .

The most obvious concern is around cybersecurity , an ongoing issue that is already on the board-level agenda. But tech-driven trust issues are much broader and are driven by three characteristics. One is the sheer quantity of personal data, such as biometrics, that companies and governments collect, creating concerns about privacy and data misuse. The second is that personal security issues are becoming more pervasive in the physical world. Wired homes, connected cars, and the Internet of Medical Things, for example, are all vectors for attack that can affect people’s well-being. Third is the issue that advanced analytics seem too complex to be understood and controlled, leading to deep unease about people’s relationship with technology. This issue is driving the development of “ explainable AI ” and the movement to debias AI.

Adding to the complexity is the frequent need to manage and secure trust across an entire ecosystem of technologies. Take the wired home, for example. The proliferation of devices—think virtual assistants, security, communications, power management, and entertainment systems—means that a large group of providers will need to agree on standards for managing, in effect, an interconnected security net in the home.

These developments require a complex extension of the boundaries of trust. The significant advantages that many incumbents enjoy—existing relationships with customers and proprietary data—are at risk unless businesses rethink how they manage and nurture that trust. Companies need to consider putting identity and trust management at the core of their customer experience and business processes. That can happen effectively only when companies assign a dedicated leader with real power and board-level prioritization with enterprise-wide responsibility across the entire trust and security landscape. Given the tech underpinnings of this trust environment, IT will need to play a key role in monitoring and remediating, such as assessing the impact of new legislation on AI algorithms, tracking incidents, identifying the number and nature of high-risk data-processing activities and automated decisions, and—perhaps most important—monitoring consumer trust levels and the issues that affect them.

• Who is responsible for the enterprise-wide trust and risk landscape?
• How have you integrated your efforts around customer trust with overall cybersecurity processes?
• What privacy, trust, and security processes are in place to manage the entire life cycle of your data?

It is inevitable that the pace of technological change will continue to accelerate. The successful technology leader of the future will not simply need to adopt new technologies but to build capabilities to absorb continuous change and make it a source of competitive advantage.

Steve Van Kuiken is a senior partner in McKinsey’s New Jersey office.

Explore a career with us

Related articles.

Digital twins: From one twin to the enterprise metaverse

Why digital trust truly matters

IoT value set to accelerate through 2030: Where and how to capture it

ICT Business Continuity Plan Template

What is an ICT Business Continuity Plan?

An ICT (Information and communication technology) business continuity plan is an organized strategy designed to ensure that essential processes and services keep running during a disruption or incident. This plan focuses on the resilience of ICT infrastructure, data centers, and communication networks. It includes a comprehensive set of procedures for how to respond to a disruption or incident, how to protect critical information and assets, and how to restore operations and services as quickly as possible.

What's included in this ICT Business Continuity Plan template?

• 3 focus areas
• 6 objectives

Each focus area has its own objectives, projects, and KPIs to ensure that the strategy is comprehensive and effective.

Who is the ICT Business Continuity Plan template for?

This ICT Business Continuity Plan template is designed for ICT companies and organizations who want to develop a comprehensive plan to protect their business from disruptions or incidents. The plan will help organizations identify and prioritize their most critical operations and services, create a backup and recovery plan, and develop a disaster recovery plan.

1. Define clear examples of your focus areas

Focus areas are the major areas of your business that you want to address in your business continuity plan. For ICT businesses, these focus areas could include increasing the resilience of ICT infrastructure, improving data center availability, and increasing communication network resilience.

2. Think about the objectives that could fall under that focus area

Objectives are the goals that you want to achieve for each focus area. For example, under the focus area of increasing the resilience of ICT infrastructure, you may have objectives such as creating a backup and recovery plan and developing a disaster recovery plan.

3. Set measurable targets (KPIs) to tackle the objective

KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) are measurable goals that help track progress towards an objective. For example, for the objective of creating a backup and recovery plan, you may set a KPI of decreasing recovery time from 72 hours to 24 hours.

4. Implement related projects to achieve the KPIs

Projects (or actions) are the steps needed to achieve the KPIs. For the example KPI above, you may need to research and develop a backup and recovery plan.

5. Utilize Cascade Strategy Execution Platform to see faster results from your strategy

Cascade Strategy Execution Platform is the perfect tool to help businesses see faster results from their business continuity plans. It provides an easy-to-use platform to manage strategy, align teams, and track progress. Cascade helps organizations quickly and easily track progress toward their goals, so they can make sure their business continuity plans are being implemented effectively.

Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer.

To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to  upgrade your browser .

Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link.

• We're Hiring!
• Help Center

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY BUSINESS PLAN (COMPANY NAME) (COMPANY NAME) (STREET ADDRESS) (CITY, STATE ZIP CODE) (CREATION DATE

Related Papers

kaustubh savant

Helena Stensota

During last decades, gender differences in representative bodies have diminished in a variety of areas, descriptively but also substantially. For example, in Sweden, social issues are still a typical female issue among older representatives, although this is no longer the case among younger representatives. A similar trend can be noticed internationally, although Sweden appears to be at the forefront, which defends choosing the case. The project aims at explaining these diminishing substantial gender differences among parliamentarians, thereby paying attention both to intra-parliamentarian and extra-parliamentarian causes. With intra-parliamentarian causes we refer to party strategies, professionalization of parties and the cyclical life of policy issues. With extra-parliamentarian causes we refer to changing living patterns including changing models for care-services (New Public Mangagement), which might have led to a stronger involvement of men in care responsibilities. If causal ...

Journal of Pharmaceutical Negative Results

Hyaluronic acid is a naturally occurring polysaccharide of extracellular matrix of connective tissues, synovial fluid, and other body tissues. It has an important role in regulating interactions intra and extracellularly between different growth factors, in addition to regulating osmotic pressure, maintaining tissue volume and lubrication.Periodontitis is an multifactorial inflammatory disease that affects teeth supporting structures which results in teeth loss. It is considered a wide world cause of teeth loss in adults. In addition to its local effect, teeth loss, it can have systemic impacts on many systemic organs. Although its main cause is bacteria, exaggerated host response and risk factors such as smoking, diabetes mellitus, HIV/AIDS, family history, and certain medications increase the disease progress.Hence teeth supporting structures are connective tissues and hyaluronic acid is a main component of connective tissues, a correlation of both in health and disease is explain...

FATHUL HABIB SHOLEH 2021

The education of moral and religious values in early childhood education programs is a solid foundation and is very important for its existence. The purpose of this study is to describe the urgency of how important the cultivation of moral and religious attitudes in children honed from an early age with the intention that children can practice more profound religious teachings later and until adulthood children are accustomed to mature religious knowledge as a provision for their association together in the community environment. This study uses the type of research library (library research). With this type of descriptive qualitative approach. The technique used is technical analysis. The results of this study are the first, the concept of the nature of culture and moral cultivation given to children in various educational institutions, both formal and non-formal. Second, there are many supporting and inhibiting factors in moral behavior, among others, the family environment, namely the parenting style of parents, the situation, the individual and social. Third, Adab in Islam, by introducing adab from eating Adab, Adab to Allah even to Adab to both parents. Fourth, Prevention of radicalism in early childhood, by instilling love for the homeland, obedience to the rules, and values of diversity. Fifth, build critical thinking skills in children from an early age. Keywords: Education, Early Childhood, moral, culture, religion

Jurnal Manajemen Pendidikan

Anisa Rahmawati

The objective of this research is to know the effect of work life balance and job sastisfaction toward teacher’s loyalty of the private vocational high school at cakung district east Jakarta.The research was conducted using survey method with quantitative approach and path analysis technique. The population of this research is 772 teachers. Research samples selected as much as 263 teachers using simple random sampling technique. The data obtained through questionnaires and analyzed using path analysis techniques. Based on the results of data analysis in this research it is concluded: (1) the work life balance have positive direct effect to loyalty; (2) job sastisfaction have positive direct effect to loyalty; (3) the work life balance have positive direct effect to job sastisfaction. The loyalty can be improved through improvement of work life balance and job sastisfaction.

Sudheer Joseph

Türk Üroloji Dergisi/Turkish Journal of Urology

Mustafa S Bolat

The Journal of Fixed Income

Electronics

muhammad mustaqim

This research focuses on intelligent unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-based, real-time video surveillance to ensure better monitoring and security of remote locations over 4G-LTE cellular networks by maximizing end-user quality of experience (QoE). We propose a novel server-based crosslayer rate-adaptive scheme (SCRAS) for real-time video surveillance over 4G-LTE networks using UAVs. Our key contributions are: (1) In SCRAS, mobile UAVs having preprogrammed flight co-ordinates act as servers, streaming real-time video towards a remote client; (2) server-side video rate adaptation occurs in 4G-LTE based on the physical characteristics of the received signal conditions due to variations in the wireless channel and handovers; (3) SCRAS is fully automated and independent of client assistance for rate adaptation, as it is intended for real-time, mission-critical surveillance applications; (4) SCRAS ensures that during rate adaptation, the current video frame should not be damaged by completi...

giuliano arnaldi

RELATED PAPERS

Langage et société

jean-François Bert

Novika Ramadhani

Novika Ramadhani C1C022011

IEEE Transactions on Applied Superconductivity

Vladimir Luzin

Rahayu Lubis

Journal of Tropical Medicine

Muhammad Hamza

Muhammad Agung

International Journal of Future Computer and Communication

Abdul Abdul

Displacing Theory Through the Global South

Ana Carolina Schveitzer

Journal of Chromatography & Separation Techniques

Anand Gaurav

Journal of Orthoptera Research

amr mohamed

RELATED TOPICS

•   We're Hiring!
•   Help Center
• Find new research papers in:
• Health Sciences
• Earth Sciences
• Cognitive Science
• Mathematics
• Computer Science
• Academia ©2024

Lateral Partner Integration Requires Business Development Plan

When a lateral is hired into a new firm, following the tone set during the recruiting process is essential. The firm needs to ensure the lateral is set up for success on day one. Openness, honesty, and transparency are key.

A 12-month marketing and business development plan should be created as a roadmap for integrating new lateral hires and partnering them with a business development liaison. The assigned liaison should host regular check-in calls and serve as the lateral’s initial point of contact for all client development activities.

Setting the Stage

An introductory call between the lateral and their assigned BD liaison should take place prior to their start date or within the first two weeks. This should be the first in a series of integration meetings that take place during the lateral’s first year.

The goal of the meeting is to help the lateral understand the resources of the firm, services the marketing and BD department provides (i.e., requests for proposals, pitches, collateral, conference/speaking engagement prep, awards & rankings, bio updates, etc.) and to answer firm questions that may not have been addressed during the recruiting process.

The lateral and liaison should discuss any immediate client needs/opportunities, expectations, what support the lateral needs, and alert clients about the move.

The lateral should walk away from the meeting feeling confident, comfortable, and with a clear path forward.

Read more: Lateral Partner Recruiting Must Focus on Honesty and Clear Data

Introduction and Implementation

The BD liaison must also obtain a fulsome knowledge of the lateral’s practice, portable book of business, client targets, and preferred marketing styles. They should ascertain the partner’s strengths and weaknesses, as well as business goals and objectives.

The liaison needs to know why the lateral was hired—their niche expertise, specific client needs, and regional presence—to help identify cross-sell opportunities, make appropriate introductions to targeted attorneys within the firm, and plug the lateral into pre-existing client and industry teams. Prioritization should be placed on client-facing activities and the lawyer’s strengths.

The new partner’s BD liaison should have the same information as the legal recruiting team, which includes the lateral’s resume, partner questionnaire, offer letter, and revenue goals. Armed with these resources, the business development liaison is positioned as a part of the firm’s long time revenue strategy for the lateral partner, versus as a document producer.

Positioning the BD liaison as a key to the lateral’s success at the onset will encourage the partner to engage them in a meaningful way with strategy, innovation, and revenue generating activities for a sustaining practice. This allows the partner to focus on delivering quality legal services, while the BD liaison can focus on collaboratively growing their book of business.

Having a thoughtful, written integration plan is imperative. A written process ensures not only accountability, but gives each lateral the same onboarding experience regardless of which practice group or industry team they sit in.

During each meeting, the liaison should probe the lateral on topics such as satisfaction with the firm, sense of being valued, client growth opportunities, bandwidth and utilization, and cross-selling successes or frustrations. Regular status updates should be provided to firm leadership and other stakeholders. If the lateral flags an issue or perceived roadblock, the liaison should dig deeper to understand the root cause, and work with leadership to course correct.

It’s critical that firms not overpromise and underdeliver. For example, a lateral may have been hired to inherit a portfolio that fell through, or perhaps market fluctuations prohibited the opening of a new office that the lateral was intended to join. It’s important to keep the lateral’s business development liaison informed of these developments so they can monitor follow-though, manage expectations, and help pivot if necessary.

The firm should be clear about their commitments. Conversely, expectations for new partners’ client development and relationship building activities, for example, should also be addressed directly.

The most successful laterals are engaged and actively participate in regular integration calls. Holding 90-day reviews that include members of the recruiting team and practice group or department leaders can provide an opportunity for the partner to be heard as well as to receive direct feedback.

Integration Process

Avoid letting new lateral partners fall between the cracks, especially if they’re rainmakers or inexperienced business developers, by having a continuity plan that includes the written integration process. The BD liaisons shouldn’t work in silos.

Find a collaboration tool that works for the team’s communication style and commit to using it. Keep detailed records and have a plan of continued support should the assigned BD liaison leave the firm, or if there is significant recent or impending change happening within the firm, such as a merger or acquisition.

Recruiting and integration don’t cease when a merger is on the horizon, and the potential for new laterals to get lost in transition during a major change increases. Firms must adapt their recruiting and integration strategies not only to speak to the newly merged firm’s emerging cultural differentiators but also to how laterals will be supported in a fluid environment.

This article does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg Industry Group, Inc., the publisher of Bloomberg Law and Bloomberg Tax, or its owners.

Author Information

Brian J. Carrozza is director of client development at Goulston & Storrs.

Courtney C. Hudson is business development manager at Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz.

Megan K. Senese is co-founder and principal at stage, a women-owned business development and legal marketing firm.

Write for Us: Author Guidelines

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jada Chin at [email protected] ; Jessie Kokrda Kamens at [email protected]

Learn more about Bloomberg Law or Log In to keep reading:

Learn about bloomberg law.

AI-powered legal analytics, workflow tools and premium legal & business news.

Already a subscriber?

Log in to keep reading or access research tools.

How and Where to Write About Technology in Your Business Plan

6 min. read

Updated October 27, 2023

Often, a business plan introduces a new technology that requires some explaining.

On one hand, as a reader of business plans for investors, I see way too many business plans that ask a reader to wade neck-deep through technology to get to the business. That’s a great way make your reader run in the other direction! It’s a business plan, not a term paper or thesis. Establish technology as a differentiator, when it is. Tell me about it in relation to its importance to the business. Don’t force me to understand it when I don’t need to.

On the other hand, as a writer, manager, and user of business plans as tools for steering a business, I believe you should discuss your technology in the plan for any business. Even if technology isn’t the driving force of your business or your main differentiator, these days, almost all businesses have to manage technology as part of branding, marketing, and communications.

To the extent that technology matters, I want to see it in the priorities and in specific milestones. Are we developing what we should? Are we using what we should? Are we competitive with tools and process?

• Let your business purpose be your guide

The point of my opening paragraphs is that the right way to handle technology in a plan depends on the context of the plan. As always, in business, form follows function.

As you develop technology descriptions, priorities, milestones and such in your own business plan, consider first the business plan’s purpose.

Business plans aren’t all the same. They are used for different things, such as:

• Some business plans are intended for outsiders, as summary and description of the business, to serve the purpose of raising money with investors, backing up a commercial loan document, and so forth. In these cases the purpose of describing your technology is validation, proof of value; you’re making your technology part of the reasons that your business is a good investment or a good risk for a loan.
• Most business plans are intended to optimize management and allow business owners and management teams to better steer the business. For these plans, technology is not describing, but rather planning, setting milestones, dates, priorities, directions, and so forth.
• Technology in a plan for outsiders

Investors, bankers, and other outsiders look at technology as part of the secret sauce, the things that make your business better than competitors, defensible, or differentiated. They want to know about the technology for its business impact. But they rarely want to wade through the ins and outs of how that technology works and evaluate it for themselves. They want to know about the technology, not know the technology. The only exception is the technology they know and work with themselves.

To explain the difference, let’s take me as an example:

I’m a software entrepreneur, and, in recent years, a member of an angel investment group. I looked to scientists in the group to evaluate technology when we invested in molecular chemistry that can ease the pain of chemotherapy. I get involved in detail when the group is looking at startups in software, web, mobile apps, or financial forecasting.

When a business plan involves expertise in software, the web, apps, and technologies related to financial forecasting, I’m curious, and I’ll look for an appendix with interesting details. I’ll join in the due diligence for my angel group, test for myself, and develop my informed opinion. In fact, during my consulting years in the 1980s and 1990s, I had multiple consulting engagements with venture capital firms that contracted me to evaluate software as an expert.

When a business plan involves pharmaceuticals, medical electronics, biotechnology, clean energy, and so many other technologies that aren’t within my areas of expertise, I validate as I suggested above, with background checks, patents, and so on. I don’t, however, wade through scientific documentation.

I’m comfortable with what I don’t know. When it involves my specific investment group, I trust other members who do know.

The detailed look at the technology comes during due diligence, not in the plan or during the pitch. For plans and pitches, we look for the patents, customer testimonials, and backgrounds and achievements of the team as validators. We want to see those for sure, and we expect good summaries as part of the business plan discussion of product-market mix, or company background (in either section, whichever seems better to the founders). Technical background and technical details go into appendices, or extra docs used for due diligence, not the main body of the plan.

Brought to you by

Create a professional business plan

Using ai and step-by-step instructions.

Secure funding

Validate ideas

Build a strategy

• Technology in business planning for owners and managers

For business owners, I recommend a lean business plan as a dashboard and GPS. It’s just big enough to steer the business. It skips the text summaries and descriptions you won’t need because it’s for your own use only. It’s reviewed and revised frequently. It includes strategy and tactics as summary bullet points to serve as reminders. It includes milestones and schedules too.

Since the lean plan is just for you and the team, not for outsiders, it doesn’t necessarily include or cover your technology. Does your technology differentiate your business from all others? Is it vital to staying competitive? Does it create barriers to entry? Does it create competitive advantage? If you answer yes to any of those questions, then you are probably already managing technology as part of your strategy and tactics. So you include bullet points related to technology in your lean plan, in strategy, tactics, milestones, and schedules.

For example, tech businesses managing product development road maps, research and development teams, extending software features or tech features in hardware would be likely to build strategy and tactics around technology. More traditional businesses, on the other hand, such as real estate, restaurants, or personal training, would be less likely, on average.

But, even within traditional businesses, some innovative leaders set themselves apart for the use of new technology. Maybe the real estate brokerage is working on its app to show houses, or the restaurant is developing new techniques for cold pressed processes. Maybe the personal trainer is offering subscriptions to remote workouts.

The key to where technology goes into your lean plan is the execution and management. You don’t describe for description only. Instead, you list tasks and deadlines and action points. If there are none of those related to technology in your business, then leave it out of the lean plan.

• Stick with the business purpose

Remember, a business plan is about business. It’s not a forum for showing off. Even in the case of a show-off business plan for angel investors, keep to the business side of it. The business plan is about what you’re going to do, not what you know.

Give the investors what they need to know, and spare them from the rest. They’ll thank you. For you business owners and managers, how you develop and manage technology is a critical factor for steering the business. Make sure you plan for it, with reinforcement in strategy, tactics, and milestones to develop accountability and keep you on track.

Tim Berry is the founder and chairman of Palo Alto Software , a co-founder of Borland International, and a recognized expert in business planning. He has an MBA from Stanford and degrees with honors from the University of Oregon and the University of Notre Dame. Today, Tim dedicates most of his time to blogging, teaching and evangelizing for business planning.

Table of Contents

Related Articles

24 Min. Read

The 10 AI Prompts You Need to Write a Business Plan

6 Min. Read

How to Write Your Business Plan Cover Page + Template

10 Min. Read

How to Write the Company Overview for a Business Plan

The Bplans Newsletter

The Bplans Weekly

Subscribe now for weekly advice and free downloadable resources to help start and grow your business.

We care about your privacy. See our privacy policy .

The quickest way to turn a business idea into a business plan

Fill-in-the-blanks and automatic financials make it easy.

No thanks, I prefer writing 40-page documents.

Discover the world’s #1 plan building software

Please verify that you are not a robot.

By requesting information, I authorize AIU to contact me by email, phone or text message at the number provided. There is no obligation to enroll.

Join Our Conference

Watch our conference.

Creating an Effective Business Plan (part II) Summary: CLASS OBJECTIVES: To enhance knowledge and skills of students about the: • Major terms of Business Plan • Market Analysis • Production Plan • Marketing Plan • Operations Plan • Logistics Plan • Financial Plan • Execution of Plan • Exit Strategy • The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) • Appendix (Essential documents) CLASS STRUCTURE • Review of the last Class, Creating an Effective Business Plan - Part • PowerPoint Presentation as per Class Objective • Students’ test / Question • Please write your answers in the box of 'COMMENT IN CHAT.' • Open question / answer session at the end of clas • Closing remarks Date: Tuesday, May 14th, at 10:00 a.m., US Eastern Time. Topic: Business Administration

Meeting ID: 816 6539 3400 Passcode: 089759

About Muhammad Saghir: University of Balochistan Quetta Pakistan Master of Commerce (MCom), Commerce and Management 1977-1979 University of Balochistan Master of Arts (MA), Political science 1974-1976

Upcoming Live Sessions:

We've detected unusual activity from your computer network

To continue, please click the box below to let us know you're not a robot.

Why did this happen?

Please make sure your browser supports JavaScript and cookies and that you are not blocking them from loading. For more information you can review our Terms of Service and Cookie Policy .

For inquiries related to this message please contact our support team and provide the reference ID below.