A 90-day ICT strategy plan for Abraaj Group – Health Care Fund.

Overview:

The Abraaj Growth Markets Health Fund is investing in Africa and Asia through a buy and build strategy of healthcare assets across the African and Asian Continent. The plan is to deliver impact through improved access, quality and affordability of healthcare and by focusing on the investment in human capital development in the served communities.

The ICT leadership is positioned to support this strategy by ensuring that IT strategy aligns with the overall business strategy. This will be done by providing organization and processes to deliver innovative solutions to the business in the most cost effective manner.

Presented below is a 90-day IT business plan to start delivering immediate value to the business.

Day 1 to 30
No.	Business Requirement	ICT Plan
1.	Lead ICT strategic and operational planning to achieve business goals by fostering innovation, prioritizing ICT initiatives, and coordinating the evaluation, deployment, and management of current and future ICT systems across the organization.	Setup monthly IT service review meeting with the senior management team. The meeting will serve as a platform for the ICT head to brief the executives on key initiatives, facilitate the prioritization of new and ongoing initiative and provide a summary financial report on IT spend.
2.	Develop and maintain an appropriate ICT organizational structure that supports the needs of the business.	Initiate the setup of a business support group (BSG) comprising of business analysts and business savvy IT professionals that will be located close the business team. This BSG team will be responsible for providing first line support to business users of IT systems as well as documenting the requirements for new initiatives.
3.	Develop, track, and control the information technology annual operating and capital budgets.	Initiate the setup of a reporting system that can provide budget and expenditure reports on both OPEX and CAPEX items. The report will also provide an annual TCO analysis of every IT application and system. Define threshold for IT spends and ensure that the systems provides notification when the thresholds are reached to prevent overspend on the budget without prior approval
4.	Direct development and execution of an enterprise-wide disaster recovery and business continuity plan.	Evaluate the current DR and BCP plan and ensure that it meets international standards and best practices in IT security.  Implement policies for regular testing and maintenance of the DR and BCP plan.

Day 31 to 90
No.	Business Requirement	ICT Plan
1.	Establish ICT departmental goals, objectives, and operating procedures.	Create and ICT roadmap plan. Review existing goal and objectives and ensure IT strategy aligns with business strategy. Ensure operating procedures are up-to date and support business objectives,
2.	Identify opportunities for the appropriate and cost-effective investment of financial resources in ICT systems and resources, including staffing, sourcing, purchasing, and in-house development.	Evaluate every IT application to determine where they fall in the application lifecycle view (Tolerate, Invest, Migrate, Eliminate). Implement detail review of systems that fall in the Invest and Migrate quadrants and identify cost effective solutions like SaaS and open source systems that can be invested in.
3.	·         Approve, prioritize, and control projects and the project portfolio as they relate to the selection, acquisition, development, and installation of major information systems. ·	Initiate the setup of a Project Management Office that can provide guidance and ensure consistence in the delivery of IT projects. Ensure that IT projects are managed according best practices and business stakeholder are provided with weekly project status reports. Ensure that project steering groups are constituted for projects exceeding 3 months or short-term high visibility projects.
4.	Review hardware and software acquisition and maintenance contracts and pursue master agreements to capitalize on economies of scale.	Undertake an audit of all IT assets to determine business usage, and identify opportunities for consolidation and decommissioning. Create an AMC tracker for all maintenance contracts and identify opportunities for renegotiations with vendors to optimize value for Abraaj group. Review all licensing agreements, especially with ERP provider (SAP) for opportunities for cost savings.
5.	Define and communicate corporate plans, policies, and standards for the organization for acquiring, implementing, and operating ICT systems.	Establish the process for communicating to the Abraaj group with a monthly IT newsletter that will provide information on key IT activities. Create an intranet portal accessible to all employees with artefacts on IT policies and standards.

Conclusion

This 90 day plan provides an outline for IT to deliver immediate value to the business and can provide some performance measurement indicators for the incoming ICT head.

I welcome the opportunity to discuss with you further about this role.