Benefits for business and IT

What are the best ways for IT to show business benefit from its own engagement with the alignment process? What are the real business contributions—not technological—that a properly aligned IT departmental group can make?

Quiring: Alignment is all about co-creation. The most functional (as opposed to dysfunctional) IT organizations are incredibly adept at co-creation. They don't wait to respond to requirements, but at the same time they're not overly proactive at jumping to conclusions without the partnership of people who have business responsibility.

Rheiner: If you do it right, your technology contributions enable business achievement. So when building a business case and prioritizing investment, you ask if IT is producing business-case results from the IT investments.

Robertson: Aligning IT with the Business is like aligning the business with its customers. Business and IT alignment is required to run a successful "IT business." IT will deliver better products at the right time, be more agile in its ability to react to/drive a competitive position, drive out unnecessary costs and add more value as it supports and enables the business. Being one of the few functions in a company that interacts with all other departments, an aligned IT function is also in a unique position to identify, define and drive needed change and integration throughout the enterprise.

Willoch: The real contributions are that IT begins to have business ideas. In fact, IT can become a fountainhead of business ideas, generating them a mile a minute because they see combinations and patterns that "mere business mortals" never thought of.

Are IT goals ultimately mapped to strategic business goals?

Rodwick: One key is to have a defined process for business users to provide inputs, and a way for IT and business users to interact. You need a certain transparency about what's going on not only with the process but also with the plan. Obviously alignment implies a lot of good communication. You need not just a long future roadmap timeline, but also a clear view of what's going on today, a way of asking if there's a problem and when will it be resolved.

Willoch: Aligning IT to business purpose is the top of the agenda for any organization today, and has been for some time. Companies have finished cutting and downsizing and are thinking about the future. The point is that businesses are finding themselves having to create flexible responses to unprecedented circumstances (and learn) how to make client-facing processes as flexible and adaptable as possible. Technology makes it possible.

Is alignment always going to require additional IT spending?

Chiappetta: Not necessarily. It depends on what's important for the company. Go back to the example I used earlier of doing the same business activity 20 different ways. You need less "departmental control" and more enterprise-level control. Moving more power into the hands of the business or analyst teams as the infrastructures are upgraded to enable effective change without the involvement of IT might mean you need fewer IT people.

Griffin: Probably. If the IT foundation is not a flexible architecture able to adapt and change easily, you're looking at investment before aligning. If, for example, you have a company that has a hundred different ERP systems, you cannot properly align IT until existing issues are fixed.

Rheiner: It probably depends on whether or not the company can take its current IT infrastructure and apply good business practices to it. The likely investment is in retraining and rescaling IT people to think more like business people.

Robertson: Proper alignment should reduce expenses that are being spent on efforts not focused on achieving business goals. Some initial investment may be required for tools to support an alignment process but the costs of these would be justified based on long-term ROI.

Rodwick: The expectation for business is that there should be a positive ROI. You don't get that on the first day. Most companies make alignment efforts by using resources they already have, although departmentally you might see some increased IT buys. From a macro corporate view, this kind of effort ultimately reduces cost.

How do organizations ensure that an alignment plan translates to tactical accomplishment by front-line employees? How does management make alignment a priority for everyone?

Chiappetta: Communicate what you are doing and why you are doing it! Provide good leadership and project management with clear project management deliverables. Provide any necessary training. If you do this well, the front-line people are often the first to buy in because it enables them to focus on higher-value-add activity, and not simply cutting and pasting across three different systems to solve a customer's business problem.

Griffin: You have to have the right governance and organizational structures in place, including communications structures, change management plans, and sponsorship of holistic programs such as data standardization, plus you have to make the compelling business reason for making the changes alignment requires. Without these compelling events, sponsors and driving forces, you're going to have problems. If you try to make this consensus-oriented, you'll have a difficult time getting anything done.

Quiring: By communicating (a) clear, simple and effective strategy throughout the organization, and reinforcing it at every possible opportunity. The best companies put a lot of attention into communication. Any time there's an opportunity to communicate with mid-management and the field and not have it presented by a CSO or CEO, but by a person the audience recognizes they have a stake in supporting, you have a strategy that's coming to life for the employees.

Rheiner: It goes back to getting senior management aligned. If senior management is aligned and teams are aligned, you may still find the middle tier at odds. Every organization, from top and middle, has to have alignment and that goes back to how people are goaled. They need to be goaled with business objectives.

Robertson: Ensure that business and IT understand the "burning platform" for why it is necessary to change (reduce costs, make the company more agile, speed to market, cost avoidance, etc.). Establish mechanisms and processes to measure alignment. Then have a communication and change management plan that translates the new processes into performance measures, with people rewarded/compensated for changing behaviors. Monitor these—and then don't put up with people who violate desired behaviors.

Rodwick: You have to have a strong and ongoing communications component. Not just a roadmap. You really have to communicate to people the state of their world, now and how it will be changing tomorrow. To get alignment with end users, they have to see the value.

What is the single largest benefit of proper alignment?

Chiappetta: Agility leading to competitive advantage.

Griffin: Agility. And you're also going to have a much more team-oriented organization, one that collaborates and works together.

Quiring: The biggest business benefit is return on invested capital. Aligned companies should see a higher return on projects.

Rheiner: Profitability—if everybody is focused on what the company is really trying to accomplish, they will drive the company's goals.

Robertson: The proper alignment of IT and the business can lead to a significantly more agile organization; one that is best positioned to respond to the changing marketplace while driving out unnecessary costs from the "IT business."

Rodwick: Increased business results.

Willoch: Achieving the proper architecture to enable really revolutionary business agility and flexibility. Historically, architecture has been the "nerdy" part of IT. Today it is the source of some of the most sophisticated combinations of business and strategic thinking on the planet.

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