IT Strategy and GenAI
20 January 2026
Generative AI (GenAI) has rapidly become a board-level topic: IT is expected to speed up processes and improve productivity. However, in reality, the effect hinges on data, security, process maturity, and people who can implement and scale solutions to production. This creates a conflict: the business wants fast results, while IT is forced to explain limitations and set boundaries.
The gap between expectations and reality can be seen in public assessments: average productivity growth is about 2.1%, while in 2025 many CEOs expect GenAI to deliver an effect of around 17.2% at the scale of their company and its processes.
Dmitry Inshakov, CIO of Kept (ex-KPMG), MBA lecturer and PhD in Technical Sciences, proposes to solve the problem of GenAI adoption through IT strategy as a tool for managed decision-making. Strategy aligns business goals with digital initiatives, sets prioritization criteria, and reduces the risk of scattering resources on incompatible projects. In this article, our expert covers three practical lines:
- how to link IT strategy with business goals and the budget cycle;
- how to prioritize digital initiatives and bring them to scaling;
- how to embed GenAI/LLM in the strategy as a managed program—with effect metrics, risks, and a competency plan.
What Counts as IT Strategy and Who Needs It
The slide below gives a terminology framework to avoid confusing IT strategy, digital strategy, and transformation. In practice, what matters more is this: IT strategy is not about listing technologies and projects, but about locking in priorities.
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IT strategy starts with an agreement between business and IT about three things: which business goals IT supports, what is more important with limited resources, and how the company will make investment decisions. This agreement is recorded in the strategy, so it serves as a basis for the budget and portfolio management: what we spend money on, what we prioritize, what we postpone, and why.
Once the company has established its priorities, the main question arises: where does strategy end and implementation begin? The strategy sets high-level decisions: what technological foundation the company is building, how it manages data and integrations, and what restrictions are set through security and risk.
And finally, IT strategy has a specific audience. The real customer is top management: they require clarity about IT's responsibility, funding logic, and risk management. That’s why a strategy is essential during periods of change and resource shortages.
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How to Develop a Working IT Strategy
IT strategy needs a clear framework: a roadmap for 1–3 years, including portfolio management rules, effect metrics, key risks, and a resource model (people, contractors, budget). Without this, the document quickly turns into a list of intentions.
Moreover, the strategy needs to be kept up to date. A one-off document goes obsolete fast, so it is logical to update it with each budget cycle and whenever there are significant changes in company priorities.
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The value of a strategy lies in capturing key architectural decisions—these determine the speed of change and total cost of ownership. At this level, it is important to agree on the fundamentals:
- architectural approach: single platform or best-of-breed;
- infrastructure model: cloud, hybrid, or on-premises;
- data and integrations: principles of data management and exchange between systems;
- legacy: what to modernize, what to isolate, and what to retire.
These decisions don’t bring instant results but define the controllability of transformation.