Obviously, this major consumer goods manufacturer's current ad hoc and decentralized IT approach has failed to support the company's corporate objectives adequately and has led to a severe deterioration in the reliability of its IT infrastructure and application services. As a result, IT leadership must take greater control of day-to-day IT operations end to end, and create a common vision for IT's overall role within the company.

IT leadership's first step must be to establish a stricter set of corporate IT priorities, policies and procedures for governing operations. This means that many of the company's IT decisions must be more directly based on corporate objectives. It also means that IT decisions must become more centralized to ensure better coordination and greater cost-savings.

Centralization might not sit well with IT staffers who previously have been allowed plenty of freedom to make their own decisions and to operate independently or with business units that had been making IT decisions autonomously. Given potential political ramifications, the move to a more centralized operating model should be mandated and fully supported by the company's senior management, starting with the CEO and CFO.

Start with an audit

With its new authority, IT leadership must next initiate a thorough audit of IT and application service levels and assessment of current and future business requirements. To ensure an objective assessment, this audit should be either conducted by an independent firm or by an internal team of IT and business representatives that report its findings to senior management.

The audit should target specific performance problems that are hampering business success today and those that could adversely affect the company soon. It should determine which problems are directly related to technology issues vs. those that might be a result of poor IT management practices. Given the escalating impact of the IT operating problems, the company needs to make important changes quickly. This audit process should take into account typical business cycles, but should not take more than 90 days.