Like many leading IT executives, RJ Juliano doesn't differentiate between technology goals and business goals, viewing them as the same thing.
“We need to go way beyond coordination to the point where the goals are unified and indistinguishable,” said Giuliano, senior vice president and chief information and marketing officer for Parkway Corp., a Philadelphia parking lot operator and real estate developer.
In Juliano's experience, a combined IT and business approach not only builds stronger teams and fosters meaningful dialogue, but also provides competitive advantage and long-term sustainability for your company and brand. Masu.
“The right relationships accelerate and enable the achievement of corporate objectives, engage customers and employees, and drive innovation in both products and processes,” he said, adding that decoupling technology from business outcomes typically has the opposite effect.
Sharon Staffelbeme, managing director of the technology consulting practice at consultancy Protiviti, said the CIO's role today is to anticipate, influence and execute the company's business strategy.
Sharon Stufflebeme
“But CIOs can't predict, influence or enable things if they don't know what the needs are,” she says. To get there, it takes IT and business alignment across the organization.
What is IT-Business Alignment?
Executives, management consultants, and researchers have long emphasized the need for IT and other business functions to align priorities and strategies.
Information technology is no longer a supporting role within a company; it has become part of the main engine. In fact, computer technology has been driving business growth for decades, with the internet and digitalization changing both the way people work and the way organizations and employees interact with each other. Therefore, collaboration between IT and business is of paramount importance for business success.
Rebecca Gasser, chief information officer (CIO) at Omnicom Health Group, says the benefit of aligning IT and business is that “the technology delivered ensures business success.” “Some of it is fundamental things like networks and infrastructure, but a lot of it is technology that gives businesses a competitive advantage,” she said.
darren topham
IT and business alignment is widely recognized as important today, but until recently it was not the norm in most organizations, said Darren Topham, senior research director at technology research and advisory firm Gartner.
In its early decades, IT departments were focused on delivering computing hardware, software and services as a utility. Under this paradigm, technology was a tool to help employees do their regular jobs, and reliability and uptime were the primary measures of IT success, Topham said.
But that paradigm has evolved over the years, especially in the 21st century, as more technology executives team up with executives and business colleagues to leverage technology to redesign jobs, products, and services. Now it looks like this.
This has led to a lot of disruption, with start-ups introducing entirely new business models and traditional companies transforming their processes and market services.
CIOs and their IT teams still need to provide practical technology services, Topham said. But going forward, companies must also have the ability to strategize how technology can shape what they offer as products and services, and how they deliver those offerings.
“This is where consistency comes in,” he explained. “Here, everyone on both sides is bringing something to the table for the common good. There is no 'them' and 'us.'
Topham goes on to say, “The ultimate expression of this is… Digital Business. “
Why is IT business alignment important?
IT and business alignment ensures that your IT organization and business units work together and move in the same direction at the speed you need.
Rebecca Gasser
“Technology is exciting, but it's often expensive and not as fit for purpose as initially hoped. By partnering and collaborating with business and technology teams, ROI is ensured, supported and aligned with the business,” says Gasser.
Surveys and research support the importance of IT and business alignment.
According to Gartner's report, “The CIO's Role in Preparing for Digital Business Acceleration,'' more than 70% of senior executives believe that digital technologies are critical to driving revenue, product development, customer engagement, and strategic operational processes. “I recognize that it is.”
In its 2021 Evolving CIO Responsibilities Survey, Gartner found that 83% of CIOs surveyed said they are “increasingly moving beyond the traditional IT delivery executive role to take on enterprise-level initiatives.” It is pointed out that there is.
Meanwhile, The Economist Intelligence Unit's 2021 report, “The Changing Mission of IT in an Age of Disruption,” based on a survey of more than 1,000 IT decision makers and executives, found that 83% are more likely to be motivated by external change. It turns out that they believe that a moderate response is necessary to adapt. Significant improvements to IT infrastructure and apps.
“In this age of technology, IT must serve every business function,” says Protiviti's Stufflebeme. IT and business alignment ensures organizations have the right technology at the right time to meet key performance indicators and achieve their business transformation goals and objectives, such as improving customer service or developing new revenue streams.
Mr. Stufflebem said the lack of alignment between IT and business creates a major barrier to an organization's market success.
“When there's a lack of alignment, the technology may work but not deliver the results the business needs,” she said. “You end up with a solution that's a bridge to nowhere, a business problem that's not properly solved, or a business initiative like reducing costs or improving efficiency.” [program] — not being implemented properly.”
What are the benefits of IT and business alignment?
Experts cite the following benefits of aligning IT with business functions:
- IT can provide technology that is easy to use for employees, customers, and partners, reducing digital friction. “This has a huge impact on organizational goals and productivity,” Topham points out.
- Increased customer engagement, cost savings and productivity.
- Organizations gain greater visibility into pain points in both their business processes and the technology that supports them.
- This boosts innovation as teams are better able to identify problems and opportunities that can be addressed through the use of technology. “We’re getting to the concept of co-creation, which creates more value for the organization,” Stufflebeme says.
- Enhanced collaboration and innovation shortens delivery times and increases speed to market.
- Improve your ability to deliver technology that drives business strategies and objectives.
- It gives you a competitive advantage in the market.
jo ann saita
Organizations have an advantage when IT and business work together, says Jo-Ann Saitta, managing director, health sciences, EY Business Transformation Consulting. ” [the enterprise] To always have the latest information and stay ahead of the curve. ”
What are the challenges in IT business collaboration?
Stufflebeme says that while strategic alignment between IT and the business is critical, many organizations still struggle to achieve it.
They cited a number of obstacles and challenges faced by executives and their teams in this regard, including:
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RJ Giuliano
Lack of trust and confidence between IT and business leaders: “The biggest challenge is having a CIO who seeks and creates unity.” [between IT and the business] And to have a corporate culture that expects and encourages that unity,” Giuliano said.
- “There's a reluctance from IT and the business to cede control or input to their respective functional areas. Some CIOs still have a command-and-control approach, while some organizations still have a culture that sees technology as solely IT's domain,” Topham explained, adding that both mindsets need to change to achieve alignment.
- Lack of business acumen within the IT department.
- Lack of technology knowledge across business functions.
- The IT department's inability to understand how technology initiatives can support business objectives.
- IT's inability to communicate how technology efforts can support business objectives
- IT departments' inability to calculate the financial impact (cost and ROI) of technology initiatives.
Best practices for IT business collaboration
To overcome these challenges, experts have suggested the following best practices.
- Shared responsibility and shared value delivery between IT and the business. “This can no longer just rest on the shoulders of the CIO,” Topham said, adding that CIOs need to train their executives to manage their own technology portfolios to support shared responsibility.
- In addition to having good communication skills, develop good listening skills as well. “This will help you understand what is happening and what it could be like in the future,” says Saitta.
- Place technical personnel within business units and ensure IT employees engage directly with business unit personnel by attending meetings and adopting agile and DevOps practices that foster collaboration. “Then technology becomes a natural part of the business,” Saitta says.
- It creates incentives for employees across the organization to engage in IT and business unit collaboration.
Giuliano said such practices can bridge the gap between IT and the business, helping organizations reach a state where the two are — in his words — “integrated and indistinguishable.”
He emphasized that all important goals are common goals, and that joint collaboration between IT and the business must go beyond just buy-in to a common goal and include joint accountability for results. He added that it would not be possible.
