The business, IT divide: are we speaking the same language?

This, the fifth of my eight-article series on achieving real business value through IT alignment, we tackle the business-IT divide directly by considering shared understanding. We have already discussed business’ expectations of IT, the role of the IT function itself and just how it positions itself within the business, and now we must examine how business and IT can ensure they are speaking the same language so that all these sound foundations do not continue to be wasted by diverging objectives.

This is one of the biggest hurdles we have encountered when dealing with the business-IT divide. Exactly how do Business and IT leaders, who speak decidedly different languages, communicate effectively enough to reach clear understanding on complex topics relating to both the business and its technology platform?

On the one hand, a common understanding on what IT wants and is supposed to achieve is invaluable for moving forward, however we should not forget that achieving this understanding is also adding complexity to the structure of the business, and that we should be actively reducing this complexity as much as possible for the business to be able to focus on doing more business!

Let me use an example from finance once more – every business executive will be able to read and understand a balance sheet or income statement as well as the management reports provided by the financial department. This affords them a sufficiently high-level of understanding of precisely what financial situation the company is in as well as an overview of the day-to-day operations, and allows these business leaders to easily recognise the criticality of the finance function as a bedrock component of any strategic planning process.

However for Information Technology, this type of universally-digestible basic toolset is not yet available, so discussions on how the technology platform is delivering business value will often rapidly devolve into a purely subjective comparison of features and specifications. This type of analysis is not a business discussion; it in fact prevents a business discussion from taking place and in turn stops the real value of technology to the business to be unlocked!

While the first steps towards making the IT function more strategic do already exist, as detailed in the first articles of this series, this subject of shared understanding remains a bone of contention even in large enterprises today where literally millions are being spent to research and address it.

At our company we are spending significant amounts of time tackling this subject, and we are making good progress. I believe it will still be a while until we can provide a simple and repeatable solution, so until then, the only option is to continue to rely on your chosen IT leader and strategic vendors to understand the link between business processes and IT costs for each specific situation and interpret these results individually.

The lack of shared understanding thus once more highlights the importance of choosing the right IT leaders and complementing them with strategic vendors. Until this shortfall can be reliably addressed, they are the sole point of shared understanding in the enterprise capable of highlighting the real business value behind any technology investments for their peers on the strategic planning team.