Strategic IT/business alignment for SMBs

Last October, at a conference for IT managers and executives, I was chatting with saurav sharma — an IT expert — about the popular concept of IT/business alignment.

The fact that so many people in the IT field even talk about the need to align IT and business is evidence that IT is not very well aligned in far too many businesses. At least that was the conclusion that saurav and I came to.

Do you ever hear companies talking about marketing/business alignment or HR/business alignment?” Saurav asked..........

Of course we don’t. If there was a rift inside the company with the marketing department or the HR department, it would mean that there was a fundamental problem, and any good company would seek to root out the issue and fix it as quickly as possible.

However, with IT departments, this type of schism has been tolerated for far too long in far too many companies.

For some leaders, the answer to this problem is better IT/business alignment. However, "alignment" still implies separation and that, ultimately, will not solve the problem. What’s actually needed instead is a thorough integration of IT into the core business.

I’ve found some support for this idea in recent reports from the MIT Sloan School of Management and The Wall Street Journal.

Five factors that are keeping many IT departments disconnected from the business:

1. Mind-set differences between management staff and IT staff
2. Language differences
3. Social influences
4. Flaws in IT governance (defined as the specification and control of IT decision rights)
5. The difficulty of managing rapidly changing technology.

 Now what i will recommend is these few steps which may be helpful in the long run...

1. Begin with IT literacy — and commitment — at the top
2. Hire an IT leader who sees the big picture
3. Create demand for IT solutions
4. Make sure nothing gets lost in translation
5. Rationalize IT spending
6. Create an IT portfolio by evaluating risks and returns