Digital Leadership - Business & IT Alignment

Digital is now a core part of every Organisation. And for this reason, having the right leadership that integrates with IT processes is highly essential. Businesses must live to exist competitively within this framework by having a strategic fit, both internally and externally. It needs to propagate a defined Business IT alignment and Digital leadership.

Understanding the Business -IT Alignment Model

To develop a Business – IT alignment strategy, Organisations must be completely open, agile and collaborative to be able to succeed at ensuring there is a complete unison of its entire infrastructure, people and processes. IT alignment means there is constant transparency with the businesses on how products and software are developed, released and utilised. In fact, the adoption of a DevOps Culture (the nuptial of IT and the business when it comes to releasing software and applications) at every stage of its strategy is highly essential to its success. This is called a strategic fit.

There are certain challenges most organisations face which hinders Business-IT alignment, which includes the lack of support from top leadership, budget, unstructured and bureaucratic processes, Cultural deficiencies (people perception in terms of adoption), lack of skills required to drive IT and implement new technology. This is prevalent in many businesses today, however, there are ways or solutions businesses can alleviate these by adopting a more scalable and viable business-IT alignment strategy.

Image Credit: Henley Business School

Case Study

In my Organisation, the nature of the business and IT services are very vital to the growth and the innovation that we as a business envision. IT is pretty much operated within a central model which at times doesn’t necessarily coincide with the digital strategy of the organisation. However, from a digital point of view the business runs its digital operations based on this model. In early 2017 both business units have come together to create proper alignment from understanding the need to improve processes, akin to ever-changing customer needs. We have decided to apply the Outside in/Inside out approach by letting this determine how Business IT and the digital landscape needs to work together. The IT Manager and the Digital leader now share a common vision of ensuring innovative technology, governance, people and flexible processes are put in place with the right budgets and executive buy-ins, this eventually leads to a more cohesive and agile strategy.

Furthermore, business-IT alignment is critical for any organisation to succeed in its digital practice,

Below, my summary on how to overcome the prevailing challenges:

1. Attain a top-bottom approach when adopting a business-IT alignment strategy, with unswerving executive buy-ins.

2. IT Managers should clearly define the targeted infrastructure with proper involvement of its digital leadership.

3. There should be brainstorming sessions shared internally in terms of modern technology adoption

4. Properly identified programs on utility and cultural change.

5. The strategy should always remain Lean with a complete focus on how to define good satisfactory customer experience.

6. The strategy should be user-led and customer-centric.

Digital is now the heart of every business as customers demand very high expectations from brands and as such organisations need to carefully align this three dimensions (Strategy, Business and Infrastructure) to all work toward achieving its major objectives.