A never-ending journey

Is alignment ever finished? What further transformation does alignment enable?

Chiappetta: You're never finished. The process will be constantly in evolution as the business changes—and proper alignment enables that evolution to occur.

Griffin: Proper alignment prepares companies for the ongoing globalization of the organization, making it competitive in a multicultural, multilingual, multinational business environment.

Robertson: As the saying goes, it's a journey, not a destination. Once IT and business have a true partnership, alignment may be easier to maintain but it's still an ongoing process. IT will consistently deliver measurable results. Then it will be in a better position to influence the operations of the business (vs. just supporting it).

Rodwick: No, absolutely not. There are always new inputs: markets change, new people join the company, new technologies are introduced. Alignment requires continuous refinement and adjustment.

Willoch: Things will continue to change and evolve. We're seeing the emergence of object-oriented business models. In the future you'll be able to set up a virtual corporation taking an idea from here, a call center from there, sales and marketing from over here, picking and choosing from excellent, function-specific objects. If you look at procurement, operations, distribution, the rest—every one of those boxes is a potential business process object.

It's clear that alignment means continuous work. Some may wonder if the benefits are worth the effort. So what are the immediate business benefits of proper alignment? What's beyond the horizon?

Chiappetta: You have more satisfied customers. You're able to release more products—and the right products—to the right people, faster.

Griffin: The ability to support agility in business, to allow rapid change of products, to respond to customer wants immediately, to aggregate information and provide better insight into what's going on in the business.

Quiring: Clearly you have faster delivery of pragmatic solutions that begin generating measurable business benefits upon deployment. That doesn't mean a solution pays for itself in a quarter—these are long-range endeavors and ideas. But some benefit has to be generated immediately.

Rheiner: The business that believes that IT can deliver what the business is looking for results in immediate trust in the organization. Which brings (us) back to the role of the business analyst. In a positive way, the business analyst's most important role is that of critic, the person who translates business needs into IT requirements.

Robertson: Reduced costs. The company is able to stop spending money that is not driving to a business goal. Also, increased speed to market. Better streamlined skills, with both process and portfolio benefiting from streamlining. Well-aligned companies apply both short- and long-term goals to drive their IT architecture.

Rodwick: You eliminate an impedance mismatch and produce a much more frictionless process. Sometimes projects, especially infrastructure issues, can take a long time, but you will see immediate benefits on people, processes and the organizational side.

Willoch: Two things happen: One, from the external and customer/competitive point of view, you have the ability to sense and respond (with the) furthest reaches of your front lines. If a customer senses something and you are able to respond in a way that the customer finds pleasing, convenient and efficient, you have therefore created loyalty or saved the company from problems. Internally, the advantages are formal and legislative and center around compliance. If you are not compliant, you cannot run a big business. It becomes expensive, messy and dangerous.

View bio page

Keith Ferrell, former editor of OMNI magazine, has written, spoken and consulted on governance and Web-enabled corporations.