Bevil Wood­ing

Tech­nol­o­gy is sup­posed to be the ser­vant of busi­ness needs. Yet many or­gan­i­sa­tions find them­selves con­tort­ing busi­ness op­er­a­tions to fit the func­tion­al con­straints of avail­able tech­nol­o­gy. To get the most from tech­nol­o­gy in­vest­ments, lead­ers have to en­sure that or­gan­i­sa­tion goals are well de­fined, so that tech­ni­cal strat­e­gy can be ef­fec­tive­ly craft­ed to meet those goals.

What is busi­ness align­ment

Achiev­ing align­ment be­tween busi­ness and in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy (IT) strate­gies is a cru­cial is­sue for the mod­ern or­gan­i­sa­tion. This should come as no sur­prise giv­en the mas­sive im­pact tech­nol­o­gy has had on or­gan­i­sa­tions in every sec­tor.

Tech­nol­o­gy de­vel­op­ments have rad­i­cal­ly im­pact­ed ar­eas such as pro­duc­tion, com­mu­ni­ca­tions, re­search, re­cruit­ment, se­cu­ri­ty and hu­man re­source man­age­ment.

Tech­nol­o­gy al­so plays a ma­jor role in com­pet­i­tive po­si­tion­ing. In rel­a­tive­ly short or­der, IT had moved from be­ing mere­ly an op­er­a­tional func­tion to be­ing a crit­i­cal strate­gic or­gan­i­sa­tion­al as­set. In an ide­al sce­nario, the tech­nol­o­gy as­set should be lever­aged to de­liv­er and or­gan­i­sa­tion's needs and re­alise its cor­po­rate vi­sion. Sad­ly, re­al­i­ty is of­ten much dif­fer­ent.

Strate­gic mis­align­ment

Why? IT or­gan­i­sa­tions do not al­ways have a clear un­der­stand­ing of what's im­por­tant to the busi­ness. At the same time ex­ec­u­tives do not al­ways un­der­stand the val­ue of IT or the full im­pli­ca­tions of tech­nol­o­gy on busi­ness sys­tems and or­gan­i­sa­tion­al cul­ture. In fact, even some IT ex­ec­u­tives don't ful­ly un­der­stand the com­plex in­ter­re­la­tion­ships be­tween tech­nol­o­gy, peo­ple and process­es. To com­pound or­gan­i­sa­tions do not al­ways cre­ate in­clu­sive fo­ra where cor­po­rate, cross-func­tion­al per­spec­tives on de­ci­sions re­gard­ing IT di­rec­tion and pri­or­i­ties can be ful­ly ven­ti­lat­ed.

There are many rea­sons with this is so. We can't go in­to them all here. Suf­fice it to say, op­por­tu­ni­ties to use in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy are not al­ways well iden­ti­fied, au­tho­rised, pri­ori­tised or im­ple­ment­ed, based on well-de­fined busi­ness ob­jec­tives or on full un­der­stand­ing of the op­por­tu­ni­ties, im­pli­ca­tions and risks of avail­able tech­nol­o­gy.

Col­lab­o­ra­tion is key

In to­day's high­ly digi­tised world, busi­ness and IT have to be syn­chro­nised to achieve suc­cess. This re­quires lead­ers who make the busi­ness de­ci­sions and lead­ers who over­see the tech­ni­cal op­er­a­tions to com­mit to col­lab­o­rat­ing to gain un­der­stand­ing of their re­spec­tive do­mains. This means new con­ver­sa­tions; new fo­ra for ex­chang­ing ideas, per­spec­tives and needs; and shared re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for guar­an­tee­ing ben­e­fi­cial out­comes for the or­gan­i­sa­tion. This can­not be left to chance.

Such syn­chro­ni­sa­tion has to be led from the top.

For ex­am­ple, busi­ness ex­ec­u­tives can par­tic­i­pate in IT de­part­ment meet­ings and vice ver­sa, to im­prove mu­tu­al un­der­stand­ing of the busi­ness ob­jec­tives, tech­ni­cal ca­pa­bil­i­ties and re­al lim­i­ta­tions. Of course, to do this IT of­fi­cers have to take the time to be­come more versed in the lan­guage of busi­ness.

IT's in­abil­i­ty to ef­fec­tive­ly com­mu­ni­cate the busi­ness im­pli­ca­tions of pro­posed or im­posed tech­nol­o­gy so­lu­tions can lead cost­ly prob­lems for an or­gan­i­sa­tion.

Ed­u­cat­ing busi­ness man­age­ment re­gard­ing the im­por­tance of part­ner­ing with the IT or­gan­i­sa­tion and ed­u­cat­ing IT man­age­ment on the im­por­tance of learn­ing busi­ness speak can reap tan­gi­ble re­wards.

An­oth­er im­por­tant step is the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and im­ple­men­ta­tion of IT or­gan­i­sa­tion changes (struc­ture, staffing, skills, style). Com­bined with train­ing, man­age­ment ed­u­ca­tion, or­gan­i­sa­tions can po­si­tion in­ter­nal teams to achieve bet­ter align­ment of the IT re­source to busi­ness goals and ob­jec­tives.

Ob­vi­ous­ly, mak­ing com­pre­hen­sive changes to the struc­ture of your IT or­gan­i­sa­tion is hard­ly like­ly to be triv­ial. Here are a few point­ers to help you get start­ed:

�2 As­sure that all IT ac­tiv­i­ties con­tribute to the goals, ob­jec­tives, and strate­gies of the busi­ness.

�2 En­cour­age ex­ec­u­tive busi­ness man­age­ment to be­come con­tin­u­ous­ly in­volved in plans and de­ci­sions re­gard­ing the use of in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy;

�2 Op­ti­mise the IT or­gan­i­sa­tion's struc­ture to best ad­dress the needs of the busi­ness by match­ing IT or­gan­i­sa­tion struc­ture, style, staffing, and skills to the re­quire­ments of the busi­ness;

�2 Cre­ate a cus­tomer fo­cused cul­ture in the IT or­gan­i­sa­tion

�2 En­hance the aware­ness of the val­ue of IT to the busi­ness

�2 Cre­ate de­lib­er­ate, struc­tured process­es to keep busi­ness and IT strate­gies aligned, such as an in­ter­nal tech­nol­o­gy ad­vi­so­ry body con­sist­ing of busi­ness and IT man­age­ment to dis­cuss and share in tech­nol­o­gy de­ci­sions.

�2 In­te­grate IT project plan­ning and ap­proval process in­to the en­ter­prise plan­ning process

The rapid pace of tech­no­log­i­cal change means that the ca­pa­bil­i­ty to evolve the IT func­tion to bet­ter align with en­ter­prise strat­e­gy will be in­creas­ing­ly cen­tral to or­gan­i­sa­tion­al suc­cess. De­vel­op­ing this ca­pa­bil­i­ty will re­quire at­ti­tude changes in both IT and the busi­ness per­son­nel.

Ul­ti­mate­ly, align­ment of IT to busi­ness strat­e­gy is a process not a project. It is a process that does not be­ing with the tech­nol­o­gy. It be­gins with lead­ers and their teams un­der­stand­ing and com­mit­ting to the com­mon ob­jec­tive of ad­vanc­ing the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

Bevil Wood­ing is the chief knowl­edge of­fi­cer of Con­gress WBN (www. con­gress­wbn.org), a val­ues-based in­ter­na­tion­al non-prof­it. He is al­so ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of Bright­Path Foun­da­tion, an ed­u­ca­tion-tech­nol­o­gy non-prof­it (www.bright­path foun­da­tion.org). Reach him on Twit­ter @bevil­wood­ing or on face­book.com/bevil­wood­ing or con­tact via e-mail at tech­nol­o­gy­mat­ters @bright­path­foun­da­tion.org.