In today’s organizations, technology is used for many sorts of purposes. Because of this, the competitive landscape has changed and become much more unstable. In the wake of years of fast expansion and innovation, severe competition, persistent financial pressure, and external pressures have made survival the primary goal rather than success. As a result, corporate leaders must make important choices on expansion and investment to achieve their goals.
Every department and branch of the company is affected by these problems, and they have even reached a global scale. Since effective solutions have become more elusive, corporate complexity has increased. Technology has frolicked a vital part in the expansion of businesses around the world, making it one of the few unique solutions. However, IT (information technology) and business alignment are critical to ensure that IT and business goals coincide with and support the organization’s overarching strategic goals. However, it often seems that business and IT goals are at odds with one another. There is widespread agreement among academics that long-term alignment between the two can benefit a company. Before you continue, you might want to check LOOKING FOR ALASKA.
The most significant source of worry is poor communication between IT and the business side of things. The gap has been shown to grow dramatically and now needs to be closed. The commercial sector may state that it has doubts about the IT system’s ability to deliver on its needs, that they have insufficient insight into the system’s risk profile, development, and issues, or that they have a hard time determining the return on its IT expenditures. On the flip side, the IT team may discover that the company or organization has inadequately funded its initiatives, does not comprehend its needs, or is unfamiliar with the processes and solutions that need to be developed.
This object aims to bridge the gap among IT and business by presenting potential alternatives. Both the IT and business sides might claim critical validity. As a result, one side blames the other for the discord. To close the gaps, wise leaders will disregard the posturing and continue working.
While there is no single “magic bullet” answer, we do have three suggestions that may be useful.
Stop repeating mistakes.
To us, it seems that in far too many businesses, IT isn’t allowed to succeed. Sometimes they’re subtle, but usually, they’re not; the same blunders keep cropping up. IT is being pushed to perform things it cannot, such as boosting data quality. People feel like IT is forcing them to use new processes and software without giving them a chance to weigh in, and they blame IT for doing so. If IT is requested for advice on the challenges of merging systems following a merger, it is usually asked for too late and then blamed when the process takes longer and costs more than expected. Or internal business divisions may blame IT because “systems don’t talk,” even if the real problem lies in the fact that these divisions dislike cooperating.
These are not novel or unusual instances. People on both sides usually know they are on a collision course but continue to ride the train. We need to place an end to this now. Both parties need to take responsibility for the past, make a pact to avoid repeating it and have the sureness to speak their minds.
Find middle-term solutions.
We base our second move on the basic fact that people are more likely to trust each other and work together in an organization if they have clear expectations of one another. We suggest that business and IT collaborate in this way by highlighting inevitable challenging technology trade-offs to create a happy medium. Some examples of such tensions include the Chief Operating Officer’s (COO) desire for highly reliable systems and the Product Manager’s desire to roll out new capabilities rapidly; the Chief Financial Officer’s (CFO) desire for systems to standardize processes to keep costs low and the Chief Marketing Officer’s (CMO) demand that these same systems be flexible to promote innovation; and the Cloud’s (Cloud’s) apparent attractiveness to CEOs and the Legal Counsel’s (GC’s) concerns about data protection.
Both parties need to articulate the costs and benefits from their respective vantage points, shedding light on the nuances that will help them reach a compromise. There will be many points of disagreement, but the key is to locate the common ground. This is quite simple. We can think of one instance when there were six significant points of contention and twenty-seven points of agreement. Put aside the six now and focus on some of the other twenty-seven. Happiness is the result. Also, over time, the company and the IT department improve their abilities to serve the company’s needs as IT consumers and service providers.
Businesses should conclude by asking, “How do we anticipate IT to assist us in competing? “
In modern times, this issue isn’t discussed nearly enough, which results in IT being treated more like a commodity and less like a strategic asset. Most businesses can get by with middling IT for their day-to-day operations.
However, there are always some parts of any business where even average IT is inadequate. The most crucial expenditure should be made not in a single piece of technology but in expanding the capacities of the broader organization. These are long-term investments in IT that companies must make. Although few ITs can be considered strategic (they’ll be hopelessly outdated in three to five years), mastering the ability to keep up with the pace of change in these areas is unquestionably a strategic priority.
When considered in order, step one removes the emotional debris poisoning the relationship, step two helps IT become a “trusted provider,” and step three aids in constructing a genuine commercial collaboration in the most critical areas. Unfortunately, the order isn’t as important to us. The universal nature of technology in modern society is impossible to deny. Apple, Hadoop, and Zip files are just a few examples of the ubiquitous technology that permeates our daily lives. It’s best to eke out every last bit of information technology’s trove of data and expertise.
Conclusion
Assessing how well IT helps a company accomplish its goals requires looking at the value it creates for the business. Alignment between IT and business goals provides a visual representation of what is needed from IT and what the company hopes to achieve. However, there always appears to be a chasm between IT goals and business goals. Therefore, an organization’s success must bridge the gap between IT and business. The author explains how an architectural strategy can bridge the gap between IT and business in this paper. In this situation, we look at both internal and external sources, little and large, to figure out what caused the discrepancy.
The gap can be closed by improved cooperation brought about by shared processes, objectives, meanings, and knowledge through efficient communication. Successful outcomes from collaborative efforts require that they be reflected in both strategic and operational procedures. The closure of the gap can be aided by planning and assessing IT and business objectives to ensure that they always support and satisfy the goals each other.
