Ask the Experts
Ask the experts is a column in the Financial
Times IT Review supplement, which focuses on addressing IT issues faced by
business leaders. This short article, written by Auridian’s MD and founder, Ade McCormack,
appeared in the 17th November edition.
"How do I ensure my IT and business strategies
are aligned?"
Harvard Business Review readers would be forgiven, having
read Nick Carr’s apocryphal article – ‘Why IT doesn’t matter’ in 2003 that
alignment of IT and business strategy should be right up there with aligning
the business strategy with the Christmas party. Deciding to drop the Christmas
party, whilst causing uproar, may in fact cause the share price to rise. The
same cannot be said of IT. QED. IT does matter, and it matters a lot.
Getting best value from one’s IT investment starts with
strategy alignment. It is very difficult for the IT department to build a
system that will help the organization become the number two in your key market
by profit. Whilst this is crystal clear to the board, it is open to
interpretation by the IT department. The strategic imperatives need to be
broken down to a level that enables the IT department to produce a matrix
showing the relationship of these business requirements to IT initiatives (ie
projects). Whilst the IT department cannot guarantee that by 2006 60% of your
customers will be web-based, it can provide the infrastructure for making it a
strong possibility. Risk weightings and associated costs can also be allocated
to these strategic requirements. At this point it is important to assign a
business sponsor to each IT project. The IT department cannot take
responsibility for achieving the 60% figure, anymore than your telecoms
supplier can take responsibility for the success of your telesales campaigns.
If everyone is happy with the budgets, business sponsorship
and risk levels then its time to release the strategy ‘into the wild’.
Otherwise the above exercise needs to be repeated until the business
imperatives are adjusted to reflect the appetite for spend and risk tolerance.
What emerges is a collection of IT initiatives each underpinned by a sound
business case.
Having possibly had a few false starts, the journey begins.
There are three sharp corners, to be taken with great care, when attempting to
steer a business aligned IT strategy (or was it an IT-aligned business
strategy?) to a point where genuine business value is forthcoming.
Accident black spot number 1: Failure to ensure that
your existing business processes will be migrated to support the new vision and
the associated new IT systems will lead to a weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Traditionally IT takes on the associated ‘whipping boy’ responsibilities. But
both sides of the business-IT chasm have a responsibility in this respect.
Accident black spot number 2: Failure to inform all
staff of the new vision and to train them in respect of the new processes and
IT systems will lead to failure. HR take note.
Accident black spot number 3: Failure to provide a
stable technology platform on which to deliver these new IT services will
sabotage success. This is no trivial exercise. Most organizations have a myriad
of disparate technologies (aka a bugger’s muddle) that need to be consolidated
into a coherent platform. This situation can arise from a lack of IT strategy
in previous years, or simply the reckless acquisition of other companies where
little regard was given to how the newly acquired IT department and its assets
would graft to the existing investment. Like a lack of attention to personal
finances, this problem simply gets worse the longer one ignores the need for a
common operating environment.
There is one last thing to say about steering your IT
investment towards delivering on the business imperatives. This ‘trip’ is like
no other. A surrealist mindset is required to come to terms with the fact that
the journey will constantly change, it will never end and your business will be
expected to constantly accelerate.
This can and does cause nausea in IT people. However these
are the new rules and the IT department’s approach to building systems needs to
accommodate this.
Today’s reality is that tactics are the new strategy. Plan
your organization’s direction too far into the future and your vision of it
being quoted by MBA lecturers for decades to come might be replaced by it being
mandatory reading for students of fictional literature.
Ade McCormack
ade@auridian.com
www.auridian.com
Ade McCormack is an IT value consultant and the author of IT
Demystified - The IT handbook for
business professionals, which is currently available via www.auridian.com/book, and all good
business bookstores.
