The word capability in itself serves to indicate aptness to perform or undertake a task. In the world of information technology, capability is important for every process in your business that is digitized to positively contribute toward your growth and expansion.

What is IT Capability?

A business’ IT capability is its ability to create and add value with the help of its IT assets and investments. Now, although every process in a business is an integral, part the IT capability focuses on only the enabling capacities of that digital part of your business. But again, the effects of enabling and capability are felt throughout the business, as no process can stand on its own. This means strengthening one will result in efficiency of processes all over.

What are the Main Goals of IT Capability?

In case you’re wondering what all the fuss is about, let’s see what it all comes down to in a brief statement or two. IT capability refers to:

• Your business’ ability to identify your IT’s strengths and weaknesses
• The ability of your IT to meet your business’ needs and requirements
• The deployment of IT to improve your business processes
• Ensure cost-effectiveness in the overall implementation and utilization of your IT assets
• To provide long-term maintenance and support for your IT dependent systems and processes

Your IT capability, as we have just seen, covers almost all the aspects of your business – from start to finish. The more technologically advanced your business is, the higher your IT capability will be. Otherwise, you’re doomed to fail as you get tripped by your own wires.

What Does IT Capability Consist of?

Just like any process or procedure in a business, your IT capability is made up of several components. These include:

• IT Strategy – This is the design and way-forward planning that will keep your IT capability in check as you progress day by day.
• IT Processes and Metrics – As you go along, you will need to make sure you have met the expectations of your business, while ensuring your IT assets are being used optimally. Every once in a while, you will need to perform tests to see how much progress, if any, you’re making in enabling your company.
• IT Organization – If you’re going to enhance your IT capability and improve your business processes as a whole, you’ll need to consider some serious organization and even re-organization of all your in-house capabilities. This involves:
  • Skills – Individual skills required to keep everything afloat by the minute and day-by day.
  • Structure – The rigid reporting and process flows that you need to adhere to to minimize errors and mishaps.
  • Knowledge – The in-house know-how you’ll need to maintain when someone that was integral for your IT capability process leaves the business, for example.
• Assets Infrastructure – Your business’ IT infrastructure will be highly dependent on the hosting servers, computers and every other device that is at your disposal. These include:
  • Hardware – Your hardware will house all your information and data. It will be the place where all your processes will run and interact with one another. Therefore, it’s integral that all your servers, computers, laptops and any other gadgets that you might use be upgraded to the latest standards.
  • Software – Without your software, you would just be the owner of a series of boxes that do nothing. Your software is the brain that coordinates everything from the start to the end of your business processes. Make sure you run the latest and most secure versions of every piece of software that you use.
  • Applications – Applications will be the actual processors of your data. They will be doing the calculations and analyses that will give you the final end-product, or what will help you toward achieving it. Here too, you will need to upgrade all your applications to ensure security and accuracy.
  • Network – Networking will ensure that there is connectivity between all the device mentioned above. Here too, you will need to use the best and latest versions of network operating systems (NOS) if you want to make sure no one hacks into your data.
  • Database – You will need to store your data somewhere. You can either keep it on-campus or opt for a third-party to take care of it for you. Whatever your choice, it remains critical that you have a secure database that you, and only you, can access.
  • Tools – Tools will be used to mine through all the data that is available to you. The more up-to-date and secure they are, the better you, your business and your end-results (products or processes) will be.

All of these need to be run by an apt tech support staff that is highly trained and qualified to ensure the smooth running and security of your processes and data.

Bringing It All Together

Once you manage to bring everything here together, you’ll have an IT capability that will not only be able to ensure your success now, but help you scale and grow when the time comes.