It’s no secret we, as a society, are too dependent on technology. Every individual needs it to survive their day-to-day life. It’s hard to even imagine life without its convenience anymore.
The same goes for businesses. A company must have a good IT strategy to survive in the digital age. After all, they need it to achieve their goals.
It’s what business-IT alignment is all about. These areas of your organization should work together to reach your goal.
How can you align your IT infrastructure with your business goals? Read on and learn the key components necessary for your success.
Table of Contents
Strategic Goals
First, you must have strategic goals for your business. What do you want to achieve?
Setting goals is another topic, but it’s crucial to achieving IT alignment. Whether you want to raise brand awareness, achieve more sales or attract new customers, you need to be clear about them first.
After which, you can think of how you can achieve them through technology. Your IT strategy should help with these objectives. Do your current methods support your strategies for your goals?
Both the strategy of the business side and the IT side of a company must align. For that to happen, set clear goals first.
Continuous Investment
Many companies make the mistake of leaving their IT team to their devices. You might think you can leave them alone after creating the infrastructure. It’s especially when you need to move your focus to new products and services.
However, as we said, it’s a big mistake as technology needs regular investment. It’s not because they can’t adapt to the changing needs. It’s due to the rapidly changing technological landscape.
For any IT team to keep up, they need the continuous investment and support of their company. It’s important for maintaining and improving the company’s alignment goals. They also have to keep up with the trends to be ready for the future of enterprise architecture.
IT’s Role in the Company
The company and everyone in it must be clear on the role of the IT department. It’s crucial to a business’s success, but not everyone sees it that way.
For many, the important aspects of a business are revenue creators. Unfortunately, the IT department isn’t one of them. It’s partly why they might think it doesn’t need continuous investment.
It’s a major concern for many IT professionals as they’re often underpaid and undervalued. However, they’re one of the key drivers of a company’s operations.
Everyone should be aware of this fact. Otherwise, alignment will be difficult to achieve.
Employee Training and Support
An IT strategy will only work if everyone is comfortable with it. Who’s going to implement the strategy?
Everyone in your company has a role in achieving your business objectives. As such, you must provide training to every employee.
However, ensure you’re providing the right support according to their needs. It will be different for every department within your organization.
A part of everyone’s training should teach how the IT system helps your business goals. It allows them to understand the alignment better and the importance of doing their designated roles.
Business Relationship Manager
Miscommunication is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, obstacles to aligning your IT infrastructure with your business goals. Gaps often happen because the leaderships of different departments don’t work with or don’t like each other.
As a result, senior leaderships focus on their specific obligations instead of learning how to work together to achieve the organization’s goals. The resulting misalignment leads to more problems down the road.
It’s why hiring a business relationship manager is a wise move for companies experiencing this problem. They will facilitate convergence and IT alignment.
Their expertise doesn’t end with business operations. They often have the technical knowledge required to communicate effectively with the IT team. As the liaison and diplomat, they can improve relationships and communication.
Convergence
When talking about alignment, you’ll likely come across the term “convergence” as well. Is it any different?
Both refer to working together towards the same goal, but they have a key difference. Alignment is working alongside each other but as separate entities. Convergence is integrating to work as one.
It can be the key to removing obstacles regarding communication and execution. When different areas of a business become one, they can better understand each other’s roles and rely on each other to achieve success.
Think of it as a basketball or football team. While each player has their specific role, everyone in the team moves as one to score a goal. When they do, they can acknowledge each one contributed to the success.
Metrics
How do you know your alignment strategy is working? The only way is to track your progress. You have to keep watch of the important metrics.
Gather all the important data related to your monitoring journey. You might have to buy advanced tools or deploy technology to access such types of data.
The right software depends on your desired metrics. For example, in digital marketing, you can use web analytics and other tools to gauge your performance.
Regardless, tracking is important for your IT alignment goals. It’s how you can determine the effectiveness of your business strategies. You can apply some adjustments as you see fit.
Align Your IT Infrastructure with Your Business Goals
Aligning your IT infrastructure is easier said than done. Still, it’s not impossible to achieve when you have the components for success.
The key is to foster communication between different executives and teams. Everyone must be aware of the goals and their roles in achieving them.
Are you looking for more ways to improve your business? If so, check our other guides and learn more valuable tips and tricks today.
