IT governance: what is it and what are its best practices

IT governance is a necessary tool to ensure that investments in technology are well aligned to the company’s goals. It seeks and uses technological resources to achieve goals in the most appropriate and efficient way.

With this set of IT resources management practices, the business is able to control and measure the results of deployed applications.

By the way, when well implemented, IT governance brings countless benefits such as improved processes, enhanced cybersecurity, cost and risk reduction, among others.

Given its importance, it is essential that companies and their managers understand what it is and what are its best practices.

What is IT governance?

IT governance comprises standards and practices used specifically by the technology department. Iit aligns all IT resources, such as hardware, software, and professionals, to the overall business strategies.

Besides producing measurable indicators to achieve goals and objectives, IT governance aims to improve competitiveness by enhancing processes and stored information quality.

Currently, the technology department is one of the pillars for the success of organizations. After all, there is a plethora of technological tools that improvement operations and results measurement.

Therefore, IT governance is indispensable for the management, control, and quality of processes, products, and services.

As the focus of IT governance is to deliver value while mitigating risks, its performance is guided by the following areas:

• Strategic Alignment: aims to create harmony between IT and business strategies;
• Value Delivery: proper use of technology investments – deliver maximum value with an acceptable amount of risk. Where the money will be invested, and what the expected return is need to be clear;
• Risk management: identifies, assesses, and communicates risks to the entire company.  It is essential to ensure business continuity, especially compliance with legal requirements;
• Definition and management of the IT department resources: including people and infrastructure;
• Performance measurement and continuous improvement: frequent evaluation allows strategies to be carried out, ensuring that their execution is happening as planned.

Why is IT governance important?

Its importance comes from the fact that one of its main objectives is to improve IT management. We know that technology is currently paramount for a company to achieve its goals and be efficient in the short, medium, and long term.

Thus, corporate governance in IT increases a company’s value and reputation, allowing:

• increased information security;
• compliance with legal obligations, mainly related to the Data Protection laws;
• resource optimization;
• improved internal communication;
• reduction of risks and processes errors and failures;
• facilitating and increasing the return on investments in technology;
• greater confidence to customers and stakeholders;
• delivery of value to investors;
• monitoring IT capacity decisions;
• company’s performance indicators management.

Framework for implementing corporate IT governance

Frameworks serve as guidelines for companies to build upon when creating an IT governance system.

In this sense, there is a plethora of frameworks that provide great guidance. More than one framework can be implemented, depending on its objectives. The most common frameworks include:

ITIL

The IT infrastructure library framework is regarded as the standard of all frameworks.  It helps you to visualize the entire expected lifecycle as well as the effectiveness of IT governance.

It aims to ensure that IT services provide the necessary support to business processes. It also comprises the set of best management practices for service strategy, design, change management, operation, and continuous improvement.

ISO 20000 Structure

It provides guidance on IT best practices and methods, and measures the level of ITIL implementation.

COBIT

The control objectives framework for related information technology enables the creation of  IT governance controls.

Thus, it helps to develop strategic directions based on the company’s technology control strengths.

COSO

It allows the analysis of the company’s internal controls, evaluating business-related aspects. That is, risk management and fraud investigation, for example.

FAIR 

It is the information risk factor analysis that identifies and quantifies the risks that the IT department may face. It aims at cybersecurity and operational risk.

Balanced Scorecard 

A framework that evaluated various elements, including internal processes, finances, innovation, learning aspects, and customers.

Thus, it enables you to develop metrics for each element and helps to track relevant information about them.

CMII

It refers to a model that measures capability maturity, i.e. performance improvement.

It uses a scale to measure the performance, quality, and profitability maturity level of a organization, measuring risks of a qualitative nature.

Positive impacts of IT governance

In a very practical way, when IT governance is focused on optimization and efficiency, the gains are many. We can highlight the following ones:

Process Automation

Corporate governance in IT aims to use resources and assets more intelligently and correctly. In other words, it implement best practices to task execution.

Therefore, the detailed process analysis makes it possible to redesign the flow of activities so that those repetitive or with a high failure rate can be automated.

Considering especially the tasks that are not directly linked to the organization’s core business and strategies.

In this sense, this view of the processes allows the identification of opportunities where automation will provide efficiency and productivity gains.

Process automation and standardization add value to internal processes and consumers, who receive the best possible products or services.

Cost reduction

As IT governance manages resources and investments, there is an incessant search for alternatives that bring better returns to the company’s demands.

Therefore, investing in tools to improve productivity, such as BPMS, is an investment with very high return and gains.

Including, updated platforms provide better results and assist in continuous improvement with reports and indicator templates for real-time monitoring.

Information Security

This is one of the IT governance’s pillars, which needs to be managed in all types of businesses. Data is an invaluable resource for companies.

However, it is necessary to have total control and security to obtain, store and manage it according to the laws in force.

In this sense, IT governance aims to diminish the risks of attacks or failures. It also provides a holistic view of how data is structured, stored, used, and accessed.

Increase in competitiveness

Investing in technology to support the business strategies and goals, it ensures that results are achieved in a faster and more efficient way.

Thus, technology is great to reduce costs without compromising quality. Another issue is the high adaptability and use of opportunities and new demands that may arise.

By mapping challenges, risks, and opportunities, IT governance also provides more strategic solutions that evolve the business as a whole.

The only question is how to choose the ideal tools capable of providing a more accurate and precise IT governance to your business.

Without a doubt, customizable tools are easier to be tailored to your needs and goals. To improve IT governance in your company, try Fusion Platform for 15 days and evaluate how the process, document and indicator management can bring benefits not only to the technology area, but to your entire organization.