IT Needs to Get a Tight Alignment to What the Business Needs

For enterprises to move quickly and succeed in the current pace of business, IT needs to tight align with what the business needs. This means that IT needs to understand what the company wants and work on those solutions first before addressing performance measures such as cost, quality, and speed. Too often, IT has focused solely on IT performance metrics without measuring how those initiatives impact the business. By doing this, companies lose out valuable time and money. I will discuss how to fix this in today’s blog post.

For IT to get a tight alignment to what the business needs, they need to understand what the business wants. This can be done by having regular meetings between the two groups to discuss upcoming projects and how IT can help support those initiatives. Additionally, businesses should define clear metrics that measure the effectiveness of IT projects in terms of business outcomes. This will allow IT to focus on the right things and avoid implementing solutions that may be efficient but not effective. By doing this, businesses can move quickly and succeed in the current pace of business.

Three key elements will help ensure this happens:

• First, IT must develop a clear understanding of the business outcomes it is trying to achieve. Without this clarity, it’s difficult for IT to prioritize and sequence initiatives that will impact the business most.
• Second, IT must work closely with the business to ensure that its solutions align with its strategy. This will help ensure that the company gets what it needs to compete more effectively and drive growth.
• Third, IT must develop a solid understanding of how best to deliver new capabilities through solid partnerships with outside vendors and service providers while building internal capacity where appropriate.

Why IT Strategy and Business Strategy Don’t Always Align?

The business of IT is delivering value to the enterprise. But for IT to provide value, it has to be tightly aligned with the overall business strategy — so that business and IT teams are focused on the same outcomes and working towards them in a coordinated fashion. There should be no question about who’s accountable for what results.

However, this tight alignment is not always the case — for a variety of reasons:

• Businesses change faster than IT can keep up. The demands on IT are ever-increasing, but businesses evolve rapidly, and new needs emerge all the time. This means that IT must constantly adapt, which can be difficult when IT needs to balance so many other responsibilities.
• Business leaders don’t always share their strategy with IT. Whether it’s because they don’t consider technology a foundational part of the business or fail to create the proper communication channels, business leaders often leave IT in the dark when it comes to their strategy. This can make a considerable gap in alignment between IT and the rest of the business.
• The lack of communication between IT business partners and their counterparts on the business side can also be an issue. Without clear channels to communicate, express concerns, or share ideas for improvement, it isn’t easy to align with other departments or business units.
• IT has been traditionally siloed, which hurts alignment. A lack of integration between IT and the rest of the business can create a disconnect that hinders alignment and makes it challenging to keep up with rapid changes in strategy or operations.
• The CIO isn’t always involved in strategic planning processes. Strategic planning is often left to business leaders, and the CIO may not be included in these discussions. As a result, IT may not clearly understand the overall business strategy, which makes it difficult to align their work with overarching goals.
• Businesses don’t always understand what IT can do for them. Because IT is often seen as a support function, business units may not be aware of how IT can help them achieve their goals. As a result, there’s usually a mismatch between what the business wants and what IT can provide.
• The focus on technology rather than business outcomes hurts alignment. When IT teams are laser-focused on technology rather than business outcomes, they can end up delivering solutions that don’t address the more significant problem. This lack of alignment between IT and other departments makes it even harder for businesses to achieve their goals.
• Blaming IT for failures also hurts alignment. When something goes wrong in an organization, there’s often a tendency to blame IT for the failure. If this happens repeatedly, it can create a disconnect between IT and other business parts, making alignment much more difficult. For example, if IT teams are blamed for a problem but aren’t involved in the solution or given time to fix it, they may begin to feel like outsiders.
• Business units don’t want to ask IT for help and purchase software without considering IT engagement. It creates a shadow IT effect. An overall lack of trust between business units and IT can make it harder to align their work. IT starts losing control over the software ecosystem, which is leveraged in the organization. Shadow IT is dangerous because it can take IT off-guard and increase the risk of a data breach or other failure. For example, suppose an employee downloads software and installs it without informing IT. In that case, there’s no way for the organization to know what type of personal information is being shared with third parties when they use that software.

An Effective Business IT Alignment Process

Step 1: Involve CIO and CTO in business strategy planning.

The first step is for the CIO and CTO to be closely involved in business strategy planning. They need to understand what the business is trying to achieve and identify how technology can help enable those goals. This includes understanding which initiatives will have the most significant impact on revenue and profit and identifying any potential risks that could impact the business.

Step 2: Share the business and tech strategy with the organization members

The second step is to share the business and tech strategy with all employees in the enterprise. Employees need to understand how their work aligns with both the business and technology goals and how it impacts bottom-line results. This includes explaining which initiatives have a more significant impact on financial performance.

Step 3: Introduce the comprehensive procedure of uploading business requests and business ideas which IT will review and suggest the support options

The third step is to have a process for submitting business requests and ideas to IT. This could be as simple as having a form on the company website or through an app. IT will then review these requests and suggest the best way to support them — whether that’s through existing systems or developing new ones. Employees need to understand that submitting requests through this process does not guarantee that IT will implement their idea, but it will be reviewed and considered. The ideas evaluation and classification need to be conducted automatically without the necessity of manual review or ad hoc meetings.

Step 4: Set up regular CEO / CDO / CIO/ CTO meetings where strategic initiatives are openly discussed

The fourth step is to set up regular meetings between the business and IT leaders. These meetings should be focused on discussing strategic initiatives, including which ones have a more significant impact on financial performance and how technology can help enable them. IT will also provide an update on their progress with each initiative.

Step 5: Build a software ecosystem with a comprehensive level of support

The fifth step is to build a software ecosystem with a comprehensive level of support for business operations. This includes:

• quickly respond to current issues via the automated helpdesk
• discuss more complex issues like system administration or configuration
• develop applications and systems that employees across the company can use by programming new features and workflows

Conclusion

It’s clear that to achieve a tight alignment between IT and the business. Both sides need to be working together towards common goals. IT teams should be focused on projects that will directly impact revenue or profit, and business leaders need to understand how technology can help enable those goals.

It is also necessary for business managers to have access to the tools they spend money on, understand who is in charge of supporting and developing them, etc. This information should be easily accessible without contacting IT or going through a long and complicated process.

Both parties need to have regular meetings where strategic initiatives are openly discussed to keep the alignment tight. This allows IT to provide updates on their progress with each initiative, and business leaders can see which ones have the most significant impact on the bottom line.