ALIGNMENT BETWEEN IT AND THE BUSINESS
CLOSELY ALIGNING IT WITH THE REST OF THE BUSINESS WILL IMPROVE DECISION-MAKING, INCREASE AGILITY AND HELP YOU BETTER MANAGE RISK
THE IMPORTANCE OF ALIGNMENT BETWEEN IT & THE BUSINESS
WHY NWT?
Over the next two years, 50% of organisations will experience increased collaboration between their business and IT teams, according to Gartner, Inc. The dispute between business and IT teams over the control of technology will lessen as both sides learn that joint participation is critical to the success of innovation in a digital workplace.
“Business units and IT teams can no longer function in silos, as distant teams can cause chaos,” said Keith Mann, senior research director at Gartner. “Traditionally, each business unit has had its own technology personnel, which has made businesses reluctant to follow the directive of central IT teams. Increasingly, however, organisations now understand that a unified objective is essential to ensure the integrity and stability of core business. As a result, individuals stay aligned with a common goal, work more collaboratively and implement new technologies effectively across the business.” Misalignment between IT and business units can hurt a company in many ways different ways including:
- Under-performance and/or limited success
- Expensive investments with poor ROI
- Bottlenecks that hinder service delivery, perhaps via slow or buggy deployments
- Stumbling blocks (perhaps outright fighting) between processes and solutions
- Confused or lacklustre customer service
- Poor communication and support for end users and potential customers
WHY NWT?
The concept of aligning IT and business is the understanding that when IT and the business work together, they can share their knowledge and skills and achieve more than they will on their own. By bringing together IT, sales, marketing and product development and fostering a stronger relationship between all teams, sharing skill set and philosophy, it is possible to drive business outcomes in powerful new ways including:
- Reduce IT expenses (at least 10% of IT spending does not benefit business goals)
- Increase collaboration
- Improve ROI by fine-tuning investments
- Speed up time-to-market
- Synchronise all units to become agile
- Upskill your industry and employee knowledge
But talking about alignment and achieving it are two very separate things. It requires a change of mindset, one where IT is viewed as an instrument for business transformation. The first step towards alignment is to recognise and embrace the fact that we operate in the age of digital business and that business agility is imperative in the age of digital disruption. By recognising this, IT leaders and their teams can evolve to become strategic partners and advisors to their colleagues in other business units. IT can play a proactive role in shaping decisions and business outcomes, rather than responding (slowly) in reactive fashion.
NWT understands what our new world clients seek through their solutions as they want results with reduced risk and the highest gain in respect of business value. The new world is about having an approach that solves challenges but a playbook mentality to avoid reinventing the wheel every time. It is about ensuring an emergent approach that seeks to locate the solutions properly in context of the operation.
It is necessary for projects to deliver business value or business outcomes, but how many of them are actually delivering what the end business requires or needs, in the timeframe that they require? In NWT, we talk about how our Services help to deliver Business Outcomes and Results, and most companies in our field make that claim. However, we ensure through our engagements that we understand the business drivers and that we can tie our Services back to the business issues that are being resolved. Without this work, how do our customers at a business level understand the value that NWT brings and how do we know that we are doing the right things to make our customers successful?
Our Services include:
