The future of business-IT alignment
IT must engage lines of business, or a firm risks being irrelevant
- Published: Wed 28 Feb 2018, 8:01 PM
- Updated: Wed 28 Feb 2018, 10:03 PM
- By
- Raj Sabhlok Industry Insight
Employees can make better, faster decisions when they have access to data and information
In many organisations, IT is being driven by business decisions made outside of the IT department. The bottom line is clear: IT must engage the lines of business on their terms or risk becoming irrelevant. To stay relevant, then, CIOs and other corporate IT leaders need to position themselves at the intersection of technology and business.
Business-IT alignment isn't a new concept. But over the past few decades, IT has taken a rather narrow approach to achieving business objectives. Applications were traditionally developed and delivered as silos that automated specific business processes for specific groups of users. Companies running Oracle Financials or SAP ERP, for instance, didn't let every employee with a computer access those applications. They still don't. Such solutions continue to target select users with distinct needs.
Today, every employee has the potential to be a knowledge worker - if they aren't already. From the mailroom to the C-suite and beyond, employees can make better, faster decisions when they have access to data and information. So aligning business and IT now requires CIOs to give non-traditional users access to the applications, data and information that were previously off-limits.
To enable extended access to applications, IT-business alignment also requires CIOs to expand their application portfolios. Specifically, companies have to grow beyond traditional enterprise applications that act as systems of record and adopt the systems of engagement that foster collaboration and interaction. Facebook, LinkedIn, Slack, Twitter and YouTube are prime examples of the social media and cloud applications that serve as systems of engagement.
Of course, the systems of record aren't going anywhere. They will still be IT cornerstones that hold critical information. But in silos, systems of record can't give enough people access to their data. That's where the systems of engagement come into play. Overlaid on traditional business applications, these social media and cloud applications enable access and engagement far beyond the user base originally targeted by the traditional application. Conceptually, rethinking business-IT alignment is straightforward: extend access and expand application suites. Functionally, adopting the systems of engagement that create the new business-IT alignment should also be straightforward, if not painless. Why? Because social media and cloud apps are already popular in the consumer arena. Users clearly want that collaborative, interactive functionality, so adoption rates should be high.
When the systems of record and systems of engagement merge, the lines between business and IT begin to blur - to the company's advantage. Applications are no longer functionally disconnected from each other or isolated from the rest of the organisation. As a result, IT teams are no longer out of sync with the business units that depend on IT solutions to pursue new opportunities. Business improves along with productivity and continuity. For IT departments, the future of business-IT alignment promises improvements in developing, deploying, managing and securing their companies' critical business applications. Much of that promise involves contextual integration, which shares data across applications and enables users to perform relevant functions of one application from the UI of another.
Business technologies woven into IT management solutions can further improve manageability. For instance, integrating analytics with IT service management software can provide deeper insights into the performance and efficiency of a company's IT service desk. Social media elements such as timelines and feeds can be used to diagnose problems and communicate real-time status updates to users and other IT team members.
Access, engagement and contextual integration are defining the future of business-IT alignment. CIOs and IT leaders who champion those principles will pave the way for their companies' success. Those who ignore them will pave the way for their companies' failure - and their own irrelevance.
CIOs can also help lines of business fill gaps in company-specific or department-specific functionality with a new breed of application development solutions that require little to no coding. Consequently, users don't need to know programming or scripting languages or endure lengthy development and deployment cycles. So, business and IT users alike can use the low-code and no-code tools to rapidly build and launch custom, mobile-ready applications.
The writer is president of ManageEngine. Views expressed are their own and do not reflect the newspaper's policy.