Business Alignment

 

Questions to ask yourself

¨ Do you know if your IT goals are aligned with your business goals?

¨ Does your IT department have a close relationship with Sales and Marketing? Can the relationship improve?

¨ Do business revenues/vision correlate with IT’s budgets and burn rates?

¨ Have your customers experienced problems from your IT systems?

 

According to the Society of Information Managers “Top IT Trends” report, IT leaders ranked business alignment as one of the top three concerns. It's not about technology; it's about the business.  The following simple practices will help you bring IT in alignment with the business:

Finding Customer Voice, It’s not just a survey

Your customer will inevitably be affected positively or negatively from services provided by IT.  It is critical that IT staff be able to hear your customer’s voice.  We have found simple and efficient means to have  IT hear what customers say and in turn, IT leaders and staff become more customer centric.  One way is to have various IT staff participate in customer focus sessions or customer service calls asking the customer for direct feedback.  We also believe strongly in having all management participate in a ‘day in the shoes’ activity—be a novice customer service or sales person for one day.

Working together for the win.

Does your IT department have a close relationship with Sales and Marketing? Can that relationship improve? Ascension strongly encourages IT leadership and Sales/Marketing leadership to have more face-to-face encounters.  Not another meeting!  We suggest IT reaches out to the business in an informal manner and discuss issues personally.   Here is an example:  Let's say IT has a critical project that needs funding.  Who has the best talent for selling a concept?  It's not IT.  IT needs to reach out to sales/marketing seeking their advice and guidance.   By doing this, mutual respect will grow between the sales and IT leaders and their respective teams.