Business IT alignment refers to the correspondence between business objectives and IT requirements of an organization. As the use of technology has become eminent for achieving business goals, it has become necessary to bridge the gap between the business units and IT department.

Before understanding more about business IT alignment, it is first important to know the reasons that have led to the progress in this direction. Here are some problems faced by organizations that keep IT department separate from other business units:

• Under performance leading to limited success
• Expensive investments with low ROI
• Slow or faulty deployments resulting in bottlenecks that hinder service delivery
• Lack of coordination between processes and solutions
• Poor communication and support for end users and potential customers

In order to achieve business IT alignment, it is important to acquire a well-planned strategy. Following an iterative process by defining one change, putting it in place, analyzing the results, and making required changes can help an organization in achieving effective alignment between business operations and IT processes. This strategy can be defined as Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle.

Plan:

• Analyze current problem & conditions
• Establish change objectives
• Create processes to achieve solution

Do: 

• Implement plan
• Test small changes
• Gather data on effectiveness of change

Check: 

• Evaluate data
• Identify deviations between goals & outcomes

Act:

• Standardize the solution
• Review & define next issues
• Repeat the cycle

For aligning IT & business, consider these best practices:

• Include all business teams along with IT team in continuous strategic loop so that all teams understand each other to function better.
• View IT as a support to transform business results; so, add IT to other business units to offer solutions to address their problems and improve business efficiency.
• Aligning all the business teams under common language and goals makes it easier to integrate the business and IT units. The main goal of the teams should be improve customer experience.
• Implement equal level of transparency for all business teams and make them aware of what are the good investments the company is making, what are the problems being faced, what decisions need to be re-evaluated, etc.

Benefits Of Business-IT Alignment:

• Reduce IT expenses by making only those IT investments that aim at business goals
• Increase collaboration between the teams
• Gain visibility into problem areas across the business units
• Improve ROI
• Speed up delivery time
• Up-skill industry and employee knowledge

For more information on strategies and solutions for IT infrastructure management and IT alignment with business operations, call Centex Technologies at (972) 375 - 9654.

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