Business-IT alignment is one of the most valuable states a company can achieve. As a business owner, it ensures every IT resource you invest in is strategically deployed with your bigger picture in mind. By bridging the chasm between your business and IT teams, you also pave the way for innovative thinking that moves beyond mere operational efficiency.
While operation efficiency is, of course, a worthy goal, its benefits are far more profound when your business and IT strategies are aligned. From this symbiotic foundation, you can feel confident that every improvement is made in service of a specific business goal.
Whether you’re working with in-house technicians or a large Managed IT Services Provider, you can look forward to lower operational costs, more informed decision-making, and improved effectiveness on all fronts if you dedicate time and resources to developing business-IT alignment. To start reaping these and other benefits, follow the strategies outlined below.
How to Align Your Business and IT Strategies
Establish common ground between your business and IT teams
Given how different their areas of expertise are, it’s easy for a company’s business and IT teams to operate with only a vague appreciation for each other’s roles. However, if you wish to develop a state of business-IT alignment, it’s crucial to push your teams past this lack of specificity.
Your IT department needs to understand precisely what your business is striving to achieve, including your desired timelines and any opportunities and challenges you’ve identified. This information will provide the foundation for an informed and intentional IT strategy. Likewise, your business team needs to understand what’s feasible on the technology side and which IT investments will deliver the desired results.
For example, a marketing manager may see the no-code promises of Robotics Process Automation and assume they can purchase an RPA license and simply set the bots to work on some of their more repetitive tasks. However, if there’s strong communication with the IT department, they’ll likely discover that RPA often requires coding knowledge and a significant investment of upfront work to perfect. The IT department may also be able to suggest a more cost-effective and efficient form of API-led workflow automation.
Dive into the details of your business strategy
Building on the previous example, if the IT team had no idea the marketing department was trying to reduce time wasted on repetitive tasks, they’d have no impetus to suggest an automated solution. So, money may be wasted on an RPA license that ends up being discarded, and the marketing team may simply return to their inefficient manual processes.
By contrast, if you take the time to mediate conversations between your company’s departments, you can dive into the details of what you’re trying to achieve in each area. In this way, you can ensure your IT department supports both micro and macro-level business goals. You’ll also know precisely where to direct funding, meaning you can avoid wasting money on unnecessary IT investments and ensure every dollar spent delivers a tangible ROI.
Encourage structured feedback
Every major project undertaken by your IT department or Managed Service Provider should feature structured points for feedback to be delivered by relevant parties. The IT team needs to report on any problems faced, successes made, and challenges overcome. Meanwhile, any departments directly affected by the project should also deliver their feedback and insights into how it was managed and the impact it had. This should be an ongoing conversation that informs future upgrades and new projects.
Prioritise access and visibility
Effective ongoing communication is the foundation of strategic alignment. Taking an intentional approach to visibility and access is the best way to avoid hiccups and blind spots in this respect. So, take a deliberate approach when setting access rights for each IT project and provide visibility to all those who will be affected. When you prioritise transparency, you strengthen the interdepartmental connections within your company and help every team member understand their role with greater clarity.
Set measurable targets and KPIs
Regardless of how well your teams communicate, some aspects of Information Technology will remain mysterious to those who don’t specialise in the field. The same is likely true of every department in your company. That ambiguity can sometimes leave people wondering if other departments are achieving anything of value. Thankfully, there’s an easy way to erase those doubts and suspicions.
Setting clear targets and KPIs gives each team member direction and milestones to guide their work. Crucially, it also gives your other departments a snapshot of the progress and value delivered by other teams.
Track and adjust course where necessary
Once you’ve established strong communication, milestones, KPIs, targeted access, and structured pitstops for feedback, you’ll have an adequate foundation for ongoing strategic alignment. However, if you step back at this point and let it govern itself, you’ll eventually find that one project or another veers hopelessly off course.
Far from being a “set and forget” process, business-IT alignment requires tracking and course correction to be effective. Thankfully, this doesn’t mean you need to micro-manage every interaction between your teams. However, it does require a systematic approach that includes scheduled “check-ups” at consistent intervals.
Business-IT alignment is crucial for minimising costs and remaining competitive in the modern world. However, as technology fuses ever more profoundly with our daily lives, business-IT alignment will transition from a competitive advantage to an essential tool for survival. To ensure you’re on the right track with your IT strategy, contact Invotec and arrange a consultation. Our IT experts have experience across multiple industries, so we’ll set you up with a consultant who understands the unique demands of your business type and niche.
