Business-IT alignment: Challenges and rewards

IT has changed the way businesses work these days. Efficient and effective alignment of IT strategies is necessary for a company to be successful. However, even after years of knowing about its benefits it’s still a challenge for many businesses. 

Let’s discuss why? And what are those challenges and benefits? While you are at it, you can also go through these informative articles about medication tracking software and enterprise application integration. 

IT and Business Alignment

Not long ago information technology was just a secondary player in the business field, but now it is much more than just a support tool for data collection and automatic tasks. It has influence over every part of business process. 

Such as resource management, workflow optimization, better collaboration and integration among departments, improving supply chain management and customer experience. Aligned businesses have reduced financial and operational risks, which is normally associated with technical and business change. 

IT can lead business like guiding lights but most business leaders mostly focus on business strategies only and leave out IT, which offers some amazing benefits. 

Challenges

IT is often taken as a separate element despite its importance. Enterprises face many challenges when integrating IT with business but the following are a few of them:

Communication

Often the IT department and business users try to solve the problem from their point of view individually. As they are most of the time located in different places they can’t interact properly and suffer from miscommunication or none at all. 

Technical Literacy

Many may see novel technologies as universal solutions to their problems but enterprises that dive in to the hyped technologies without properly understanding them are often at risk of loss. It is good to be open to new opportunities but with reason. You will only by be blowing up your budget if you don’t have a clear idea of what you want from that technology.

Proper Business Strategy

A business strategy that is not clearly defined can cause serious blunders. If there is not a proper plan in place the technology will only support individual actions and not the whole process. That is how misalignment between business and IT is caused. 

Strategic Agility

As a business develops its growth plan needs to be updated. That is when the priorities of a company change, so its IT strategy also needs to be upgraded. Some executives leave IT out in such situations and use the same outdated IT strategy, which only brings them poor results as it can’t properly support the business. 

Budget Line Item

Many executives consider IT as a budget line item and only think of its cost. They don’t think of it as a true of part of the business. Business leaders need to change this perception as it will limit their ability of capitalizing on technology. 

Rewards

Companies that have technology integrated in their operations perform better. They achieve their goals with little effort and reap benefits such as improved ROI and more profit. Businesses aligned with IT can also have the following advantages:

• Better services and products
• Decreased cost
• Optimized teamwork
• Better decision making due to improved analytics 
• Improved approaches of handling and managing risks compliance problems

Conclusion

Information technology has a great potential and influence over businesses. Its integration in your business can help you take benefit of the technology that can support your current and future goals. That’s how you can increase your productivity and make better investments. A solid business strategy that is backed by a clearly understood technology is a great tool to have.