Today's business is faced with unprecedented and unique challenges, which, if not addressed by swift and decisive actions, could quickly compromise strategic competitiveness. Corporations manage many assets like money, facilities, customers, employees etc, but technologies that collect, store and disseminate information are the assets that are most complex to manage. For many years, organizations could succeed despite weak IT management practices.

Over the years, research has shown that top-performing companies generate up to 40 percent more returns on their IT investments than their competitors. Deriving optimal value from IT is continuously increasing as an important organizational competency.

IT governance could be broadly defined as an accountability framework of corporate governance principles on the use of IT to achieve corporate performance goals. All enterprises have some degree of IT governance, but the better organized companies have a well defined structure consistent with the organization's mission, strategy, values and culture. In such organizations, IT is part of their competitive strategy.

Good corporate governance is increasingly being perceived by stakeholders and investors as a key parameter in evaluating investment decisions. A McKinsey study even found that investors are professional investors are willing to pay a premium for companies with high governance standards.

However, lot of time and effort of senior management is involved in putting together a good IT governance framework. If these decisions are left to chance, or neglected, then companies could seriously jeopardize their strategic competitiveness.