IT strategy consulting · Governance · Roadmap
Mid-sized German companies rarely lack ideas about their IT. What they lack is a decision order: which of the dozen items on the list come first, who decides what, and which of them the organisation can actually absorb this year. That is exactly what this advisory work addresses: a target state, a governance model that survives everyday business, and a roadmap with owners and timing. It is provided by VALLEY IT SERVICES GmbH, the advisory company of the VALLEY IT GROUP, a group that not only advises on IT operations but also runs them.
01
Consulting that ends in a document is easy to buy and hard to use. The test of an IT strategy is whether the next three decisions become easier.
The work starts from the business, not from technology: what the company makes its money from, where it wants to grow, which constraints are real. That determines what the IT landscape has to support – and, more usefully, what it does not. Most mid-sized companies can afford far fewer parallel initiatives than their project list suggests, and the main value of a strategy is the courage to postpone things deliberately rather than by accident.
What this is not: a vendor selection dressed up as advice, a benchmark report, or a transformation programme that needs a department of its own. Engagements are sized so that the company’s own management can run them, with support where it matters.
02
Rarely all six at once. The first conversation usually shows which two matter now.
A — 01
A clear picture of where the IT landscape should be in three to five years, broken into areas for action in a defined sequence. Priorities are set against business impact and the organisation’s capacity to change, not by how appealing the technology is.
A — 02
Decision rights, roles, committees and a small set of indicators, designed so that strategy can be steered in everyday business rather than revisited once a year. Governance that nobody can actually work with is a common reason why strategies quietly expire.
A — 03
An assessment of the existing landscape and a platform strategy that fits the company’s size: which core systems will still be fit for the next decade, what moves to a managed platform – in-house or external – and what is kept deliberately simple.
A — 04
When several projects run in parallel, budgets are under pressure and expectations keep rising, the task is structure and focus: what continues, what stops, what is sequenced differently – and how that is explained internally.
A — 05
Independent assessment of service providers, platforms and operating models, judged by benefit, risk and how well they can be managed. Operations can be delegated; responsibility cannot, so the client’s own capacity to oversee them is part of the design.
A — 06
From strategic assessment to a prioritised roadmap with concrete initiatives, named owners and realistic timing – followed, if that is wanted, by support during delivery rather than a handover and goodbye.
“IT strategy is valuable when it creates direction and takes effect in operations.”
Alexander Maintok · VALLEY IT SERVICES GmbH
03
Five steps. The first two are short on purpose – they decide whether the rest is worth doing.
Analysis. Interviews with management and key people, a look at the systems, contracts and costs that actually exist, and an honest account of where the organisation stands. Usually a matter of weeks.
Target state. What the IT landscape has to support, expressed in business terms and agreed with the management team, so that later decisions can be measured against it.
Prioritisation. Areas for action ranked by impact and feasibility, with explicit decisions about what will not be done this year.
Roadmap. Initiatives with owners, sequence, dependencies and indicative budgets – detailed enough to decide, not so detailed that it is obsolete in a quarter.
Support. Optional involvement during delivery: steering, escalation, partner management, and the occasional uncomfortable question.
04
Advice on IT operations carries more weight when it comes from people who run them.
| Measure | Figure |
|---|---|
| Employees | approximately 600 |
| Customer sites served | more than 10,000 |
| Managed end-user devices | 340,000 |
| Countries with IT support | more than 50 |
| Service revenue | EUR 70 million |
Figures: VALLEY IT GROUP. The group was named Germany’s best IT service provider 2026 in the EUR 50 to 250 million revenue band at the Channel Excellence Awards (ChannelPartner, 22 January 2026). VALLEY IT SERVICES GmbH brings together the group’s advisory and strategy work.
For an international reader the practical consequence is this: strategy work and the operations that follow from it can come from the same house, in Germany, with German-language delivery on the ground and English at management level. Advisory engagements do not oblige anyone to buy operations – the independence of the sourcing assessment is part of what is being bought.
05
Alexander Maintok is Managing Director of VALLEY IT SERVICES GmbH and of integer GmbH, a shareholder in VALLEY IT GROUP GmbH and a limited partner in VALLEY Management Beteiligungs GmbH & Co. KG; he is responsible for the group’s operating business. The official German designations are Geschäftsführer der VALLEY IT SERVICES GmbH, Geschäftsführer der integer GmbH, Gesellschafter der VALLEY IT GROUP GmbH and Kommanditist der VALLEY Management Beteiligungs GmbH & Co. KG; his group-wide responsibility is described in German as verantwortlich für das operative Geschäft der VALLEY IT GROUP GmbH. He was among the contributors to Gaia-X, the European initiative for a sovereign data infrastructure, from its first phase onwards. Conversations are held at management level, in German or English.
06
Yes. Management-level work – workshops, target state, roadmap, steering – is available in English, and written deliverables can be produced in English or bilingually. Day-to-day delivery at German sites is normally conducted in German, which is usually what the people involved prefer.
Mid-sized companies, typically between 100 and 3,000 employees, where IT has become too important to be left to informal decisions but the company is too small to carry a large central IT function. Also international groups whose German subsidiaries need an independent local assessment they can rely on.
Both exist in the group, and they are deliberately kept apart in an engagement. The advisory work, including any assessment of service providers, is conducted so that it remains valid whoever ends up operating the systems. If operations by the group are the right answer, that is a separate decision and a separate contract.
With a conversation at management level, usually an hour, about the situation and the two or three decisions that are actually pending. If the conclusion is that no engagement is needed, that is said plainly. Where it makes sense to continue, a short written proposal follows with scope, duration and price.
Conversation
A first conversation clarifies where your company stands and which of the six areas above is worth starting with – in English or German, with no obligation on either side.
Arrange a conversationBook directly from the calendar