How Business Alignment Is The Relationship Between It Professionals And The Body Of The Company

Alignment and collaboration between business and IT was increased as a result of a highly

The purpose of this article is to illuminate the need for any organization to have its IT strategy and business strategy properly aligned. While many organizations view IT and business alignment as an event – it is actually an on-going process, or continuous journey. Therefore, the main problem is that many organizations of today still hold these two principles (business mission & IT strategy) as two separate entities. However, in the Information Age – collaboration is key to capturing and retaining market penetration. To not have alignment with the IT and business strategy together is not a matter of want it is a matter of survival. This report will expand upon the need for business and IT strategic alignment as well as examine what happens in lack of a comprehensive plan. This will be done by examining the Vermont Teddy Bear company prior to and after the arrival of Bob Stetzel, the Vice President of Information Technology. This document will view it findings and make recommendations on the immediate and future operations of the company.

Business Plan Alignment: aligning plans of the use of the software with the organizations business plans.

In order to leverage IT for the benefit of the whole organization enterprise architecture must be developed to oversee IT strategy. Centralizing IT strategy at the start of the new business strategies will be important to make sure IT and business are working together with common goals that deliver the most value. The following steps are to be completed within each department:

Discussion Question 11.1: Why is it important for an organization to have alignment between its strategy and organizational structure?

Alignment of family and business. By keeping family, management organization, and ownership balanced, we ensure healthy family ties, ongoing business performance, and next-generation continuity.

The solution to be implemented should felicitate higher coordination among the business partners leading to better information circulation and targeted customer approach, i.e. to make efforts that the same technician handles the same customer.

Your car uses more fuel when the engine is overworked. When the wheels are not working together, the engine has to work harder. An alignment service will increase your vehicle's fuel efficiency. An alignment service will also help you save money on expensive mechanical problems. When the wheels are not aligned, the mechanical parts will deteriorate at a fast rate.

In the market today, business is showing growing interest to partner with IT to make sure they get the value for investing huge in technology. But, still there is a gap between the two departments and the IT folks think that they do not have enough support from the business to ensure the value is realized for the organization. A good example of deep integration of IT and business is the recent firing of the Apple maps chief. The ill-fated Apple maps was the failure of both the IT folks who couldn’t develop an efficient app for maps and also the business who couldn’t gather all the requirements and couldn’t manage the project to achieve the desired output. As a result, the Apple exec Richard Williamson was blamed and fired for the disastrous project and humiliation for the organization.

Alignment of an enterprise’s goals with its IT1 and IS1 systems has been a challenge ever since IT became a business enabler. Proposing an IT alignment requires a thorough understanding of the business goals of the enterprise and the knowledge that alignment is an iterative process which requires constant measurement and honing (Chan, 2002). Enterprises often face the problem of balance of priorities between IT and Business objectives. This report deals with one such case that faced alignment and prioritization hardships resulting in an unclear approach to achieve a corporate strategy.

There are communication concerns between business and IT sectors. The relationship confidential the whole association does not work adequately, Hefty does not arise up with a composite way that initiatives both IT and commercial organization, hereafter ignoring to proposal a solid IT methodology.

The partnership at Hefty Hardware between IT and the business is not effective. One of the core problems faced by Hefty Hardware was the lack of a productive, working relationship between the company’s IT and business divisions. The four building blocks needed for a foundation on which a solid relationship could be constructed; competence, credibility, interpersonal interactions, and trust, were not present between the two divisions (McKeen & Smith, 2012). The business division felt IT lacked competence when dealing with business needs, demonstrated by the IT department not having knowledge of Hefty Hardware’s basic business concerns, goals or processes.

CHANGE is the only constant in the relationship between information systems and organizations. As technology evolves and changes, its introduction into organizations requires changes in the firm 's infrastructure and the services it can provide to its employees, customers, and suppliers.

Strategic alignment occurs when the Information Technology (IT) and business strategies are in dynamic symmetry with the structures that support strategy execution, which include; organization framework and Information systems (Lapiedra, Alegre, and Chiva, 2006). Therefore, when this alignment exists IT can predict what the business future requirements are and set up a trajectory to meet those upcoming needs (Hu and Huang, 2007). Luftman (2003) noted that for over two decades IT to business alignment has been classified among the top management concerns in organizations. Although IT-business alignment has been identified as a promoter for IT investment to enhance organizational performance, fear prevails among management teams that the return of investment in IT will not be achieved. The main reason of failure to generate return from IT investment is the practice’s challenge faced by many implementers due to external forces, like transformation of IT (Luftman and Kempaiah, 2008), cost, and lack of understanding on alignment framework and models to use at different strategic planning levels (Oana, 2010).

Following to that, the data shows that 33 company as the second majority group of SMEs reach level 3 of business information technology alignment maturity level. As stated by Luftman (2000), company with alignment position in level 4 probably having improved or managed information technology process. On the other hand, he mentions that level 3 of alignment maturity means there are some establish focus processed running in the company. It is likely that maturity level in corporate level view varies significantly across enterprises and is approximately bell shaped (Figure 17). It is clear that most companies can be found in the middle belly of distribution which means they reach either the improved / managed process level or established focus process level.