Leading UK technology consultancy expert highlights the necessity for a constantly evolving target operating model (TOM) curated to specific organisational needs.
Across all industries, IT leaders are ramping up AI adoption plans in the year ahead alongside cybersecurity, cloud and privacy needs. According to ITPro’s 2025 Future Focus report, over three-quarters (78%) of surveyed IT leaders state that AI will be one of their top three focuses in 2025. Additionally, nearly a quarter (24%) intend to spend between 21% and 31% of their IT budget on AI alone this year.
Notably, however, this report highlighted that IT leaders currently have difficulties with AI adoption and deployment, citing difficulty integrating AI into daily workflows, or a lack of in-house technical expertise to maximise the benefits of the technology. While IT leaders are optimistic about the future and the possibilities of emerging technologies, there is also a sense of realism towards potential hurdles facing organisations.
For continued success in 2025, businesses, especially small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), need the right forward-thinking blueprint for operational and strategic goals, including how the influx of new technologies and processes, as well as skills and expertise, will intersect and thrive within their organisation.
Pete Smyth, CEO of Leading Resolutions, echoes this sentiment, stating that the right target operating model can help support IT leaders in this age of new technology, whilst assessing and articulating the best journey to achieve strategic goals.
“Businesses with previous experience of ineffective Target Operating Model (TOM) projects may have doubts about TOM change value and the need for continuous assessment. These stem from more neglectful experts, who aren’t interested in the specific needs of your organisation. These consultants are more suited to providing generic approaches en masse, rather than actually addressing and curating a tailored approach.
“Similarly, the inertia to change may be caused by feeling everything is running too smoothly to warrant major adjustments. After all, if things are working okay now, why completely upheave operations? But a well-crafted TOM isn’t just another corporate exercise; it’s the blueprint for how your organisation operates to meet strategic goals and objectives and can adapt to changes, ensuring it can meet any challenges thrown its way.”
“Not addressing can lead to the organisation becoming bloated, slow or having key skill or capability gaps. With AI adoption plans becoming a necessity for enterprises of all sizes, ignoring the need to update your current TOM can leave your organisation underprepared for growth, change, or the unexpected that’s certain to come with onboarding new technologies and also the current volatility in the business landscape.”
Smyth further highlights the key indicators for businesses to change their current target operating model.
“Business leaders will already recognise the major signs for a shift in strategy, such as a major acquisition or divestment, new product launch, or new senior leadership addition. Similarly, market condition changes may necessitate a strategic change to capitalise on something new, quickly. But other factors such as cutting down costs and inefficiencies, scaling your organisation and changes in technology, such as AI adoption trends, and even skill or personnel shortages all invoke a need to change in TOM.”
“SMBs need that added flexibility from a strategic perspective to remain adaptable to quick changes. Inertia and the fear of major disruption may be keeping you from optimising your operations, but without a strong strategy, your business may become obsolete completely in the coming years. Allocating resources, not just financial resources, but existing technology and staff scaling needs, are not set-and-forget principles, but constantly need assessing, upgrading and evaluating, ideally with an expert technology consultant to oversee the process.”
Smyth concludes: “Whilst business owners may feel they are equipped to tackle radical changes themselves, being on the inside can make it difficult to get a true enterprise view of the issues and opportunities. Objective decision-making with market-level visibility is more difficult to achieve. But similarly, a generic approach – usually peddled by larger, impersonal consultancies with more cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all approaches – might not provide the specific direction or applicable action you need to improve operations.”
“A rapid assessment style approach, combined with utilising the most talented and experienced technology and organisational experts, allows for a more empathy-led transformation strategy tailored towards what your business really needs. Through this, you get a clearly articulated picture and journey across what needs changing, and where those changes will great the greatest value specific to your business.”
