Business Alignment and the CIO
IT and Business Alignment is today’s Holy Grail for IT organizations and the CIOs that endeavor to lead them. But why pursue something so seemingly unattainable? Because, based upon a recent survey by CIO Magazine, alignment gives CIOs access to more of the resources they need – everything from more budget to more staff to a greater ability to focus on strategic IT.
The 2007 State of the CIO survey identified that only one out of five CIOs is aligned with the business’s strategic goals.
The same survey determined that aligned CIOs were twice as likely to have created a new revenue stream and 150% more likely to have created a competitive advantage for the business than unaligned CIOs.
Some would call this “business savvy”, not “business alignment”. Despite the lofty intentions of seeking alignment, perhaps a more pragmatic focus is to make IT relevant to the business.
Beyond lowering costs and opening new business opportunities, finding new ways to increase the business bottom-line profitability is a more tangible objective.
Today’s CIOs need to better understand the company’s products and services, its customers, and the issues facing its stakeholders – marketing, sales, manufacturing, distribution, business partners and customers.
Ask the question, what can IT do to make their jobs easier and improve the bottom line? Answering the question will most certainly lead to business alignment.
Comments
Let me start by saying that my focus is a little more immediate. Within the IT services industry, it has always struck me how less of technology we use to reduce costs/ improve revenues, or to plain old communicate. We travel for sales, presales whatever, manytimes a year in the era of Video conferencing, we use expensive international calling in the age of VoIP, and rely on e-mail to get most things done. And that is just for starters. Gives me the feeling that we are the last people to use the same "wonder" solutions we project to clients. In fact, we should be early adopters for most new technologies, even if in small pockets, always on the leading edge. Might just help us market better at that. What's your take on the extent we utilize IT within?
Posted by: Anurag | April 9, 2007 02:03 PM