Is it advisable to just forget the Business IT alignment when it is just small number of companies that business have assimilate IT and the alignment concept have become invisible?
I think it is a very important concept for companies that have not reached the same level of maturity attained by the enumerated companies to continuously access their business and IT alignment initiatives. It is also important for us to avoid what experts called hallow effect. There was a time when Dell computer was the number one PC seller with a top notch customer service model. When they slip and people look back they found a lot of things that the company could have done better. Another example is Jet Blue airline. Prior to the time the company ran into bad weather problem that cause delay and cancellation and passenger sitting in the run way, a casual observer may have assumed that the company Business and IT is fully aligned.
Comparing IT and accouningt in the alignment paradigm is totally missing the point. In accounting 1+1 will give you 2 and has not changed for centuries. In IT 1+1 use to give you peer to peer, before it proceeds to client server then distributing computing and we are now talking of cloud computing. What I am saying is that things change very fast in IT and for business and IT to aligned, you constantly need to leverage the utmost benefit of IT for your business advantage. The fact that you achieve Business IT alignment today is not a guarantee you will achieve it tomorrow.
As for CEO and business alignment, yes, CEO and business alignment is imperative. For example let?s look at Home Depot. Bennie Marcus manage home Depot from a small company to the point where it was agreed that he no longer fit the position of CEO for a maturing company. Bob Nardell was brought in to replace him. After six years Bob Nardell was let go because the company has mature to a company that needs a CEO that can manage cost. Nardell is no such CEO as he latter proved at Chrysler when he gave away a million dollar bonus to the Dodge team that won Daytona 500 in 2008.. He also decline rescue loan from government because it will require cutting down on executive compensation.
William Perez successful career at S C Johnson did not making him a fit at Nike as was let go within a year
“Business-IT alignment” is one of those phrases that comes up incessantly at conferences, in analyst notes, and in trade articles. A great goal to shoot for, but what does the end goal look like?
Julia King, writing in ComputerWorld, provides an interesting snapshot of businesses that seem to have achieved alignment. That is, IT and the business aren’t just aligned, they’ve become one in the same:
“Forget IT-business alignment. [There is] a small number of companies where business and IT are virtually indistinguishable… IT and the business are not so interested in aligning but rather are fully engaged in converging on an enterprise vision or goal that hovers above every department and project plan and is crystal clear to each and every employee.”
Consider these examples cited by King:
Zappos.com: Behind the scenes at this online shoe retailer, “IT is embedded in everything Zappos does, from engineering and continually enhancing the customer’s online experience to coordinating the warehouse robot system.”
Progressive Corp.: “Virtually all new hires at Progressive take a core insurance curriculum at the company’s IT University. After that, they spend at least a few years out in the business units.” The company’s CIO, Ray Voelker, “spent several years early in his career in the claims business.”
Southwest Airlines Co: “Virtually all of the products Southwest has developed and implemented have been enabled by technology….” IT employees are not hired based on their technical knowledge, but hired on “passion for customer service and open communication,” considered “absolutely critical in the airline’s 850-person IT group ‘because it is technology that is our product.’”
Procter & Gamble Co.: “To help drive faster adoption of more products, IT has developed a virtualized environment that P&G uses to conduct product design work, product placement research and even consumer feedback studies.”
Interestingly, these converged companies also have something else in common: their employees and managers easily swap roles in and out of IT positions. Such was the case with Vanguard’s CIO Paul Heller, who has also led the firm’s retail division. “We’re really not all that complicated of a firm,” he is quoted as saying. “We’re not trying to do 100 different things, so there’s not that classic tension between different businesses, and there aren’t stovepipe systems. It’s really all about running the firm, and it’s about doing the right thing for the client. We all move between jobs, so it’s not about your job; it’s about wearing that bigger hat — the Vanguard hat.”
So, perhaps its time to put the tired argument of “IT-business alignment” to rest. When it comes to goals and objectives, the vaunted state of business-IT alignment is about as fuzzy a goal as you can get. It’s even fuzzier than ROI, and at least ROI often gets actual numbers applied to it. Until King’s article referenced above, I’ve rarely even heard anyone describe what a business with business-IT alignment would actually look and act like.
Can you imagine people talking about “aligning” accounting and finance to the business? Or “aligning” the CEO to the business? That would be pretty pathetic, wouldn’t it? So why do we constantly fret about “business-IT alignment”?
So, rather than merely becoming “aligned” — with all the vagueness the term suggests — business becomes the driver of IT, and IT becomes the driver of business. In companies that are moving forward and meeting the expectations of their customers, IT folks not only “get” the business, they are the business.
