Get Your IT and Business Aligned Before Migrating to the Cloud
There are two major sources of friction between IT and business teams. First, CIOs spend the majority of their time managing daily operations, including high-level decision-making. Business managers (and consultants) often view IT as system administrators, only concerned with techniques that improve the efficiency of information systems.
But you do need an accurate view of both to make informed decisions — an obstacle that majority enterprises often overlook.
So, what’s the hold-up?
Business and IT: What’s Not Right With the Current State
When it comes to bringing business and information technology together, two parties with very different roles and purposes, there’s always a sense of discomfort.
While businesses are interested in revenue maximization and growth, IT departments focus on cyber security and risk reduction.
Despite the existence of the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and Chief Information Officer (CIO) roles, many tech executives say it’s difficult to establish maximum IT value. You might easily recognize a dysfunctional IT-business relationship if your company shows up problems like:
- Limited success and/or underachievement
- Expensive investments with a low return on investment
- Bottlenecks that obstruct the delivery of services, such as sluggish or buggy deployments
- Poor customer communication and assistance
Aligning Business and IT Workflow to Maximize Cloud Investment
Although these two facets of a business may not seem to fit together, given a closer look, they both share a common goal: to offer customers an easy-to-navigate path to convenience.
In this new customer environment, process silos no longer align with the silos of the corporate structure. The alignment of business and IT workflow should incorporate technology, people, and processes into a more effective operational model that delivers positive outcomes for the customer.
Needless to say, the fusion offers a host of potential benefits:
- Better communication between departments
- Improves decision-making
- Improved productivity and user experience
- A better understanding of the exact cost of incidents
- Accelerated time-to-market
- Better utilization of time and IT resources
- Fine-tuning of investments
Best Practices for Successful IT-Business Alignment
Business-IT alignment is about creating a level playing field where everyone knows the rules of engagement and feels empowered to succeed.
This is certainly a good time for IT leaders to take a breath, reassess, and ensure that their IT teams are on the same page as the business when it comes to the cloud. Here are some suggestions to get you started.
1. Avoid silos.
The challenge today is that most companies operate in silos, where different departments rarely interact. Staff from marketing hardly ever talk with the IT team, and both divisions rarely get insights from sales.
Marketing, techs, and sales are on a never-ending loop — it’s a continuous cycle of strategy, execution, and learning. In fact, when you bring them together in a continuous loop, you’ll streamline operations and cut costs.
2. Align IT and business departments
To get your clients on board with your technology roadmap, start by engaging them early in the process. Instead of IT strategizing alone, include business departments in your planning phase to present a united front. Create a cross-departmental team to explore opportunities without bias.
If your organization is aligned, it will be much easier to secure buy-in from key stakeholders. A strategic business relationship manager can help you navigate the ups and downs of this symbiotic relationship.
3. Share a strategic vision
Business and IT leaders — each with different priorities — must come together to form a cohesive, long-term strategy. IT leaders should be at the table with these business and strategic leaders — and they and those stakeholders need to understand those goals.
IT leaders must ensure that they develop strong relationships with the business side of the company. If IT is viewed as a separate entity, it can struggle to gain traction with company-wide technology spending.
For example, if an enterprise decides to purchase a new application for employees, they need to know that there is someone they can turn to for support. If they don’t know the people who provide that service, then there’s potential for confusion about cost and implementation
4. Redeem IT as a force for business transformation
IT is critical to the success of any company, and it doesn’t just belong in the basement. Everyone understands that without IT, their business could not function.
But more and more organizations are beginning to see IT in the same light as Sales, Marketing, or Finance in an organization-as a business enabler.
5. Create an operational plan
Once you’ve made the strategic decision to go with cloud services, you need to work out how they will be managed going forward. Will your teams use the new services to improve efficiency or not?
Broadly speaking, specific operational plans can be subdivided into two categories. Foundational, where you need to prepare the base for a new application or migrate existing ones to the cloud. Discrete, where you decide whether you wish to solve a current problem or look for solutions to an upcoming project.
Rethink Your Cloud Adoption Strategy
You’ve heard all about how cloud computing is changing the way organizations do business. With the cost savings alone―not to mention the flexibility you get with cloud―it’s worth considering cloud adoption.
However, before you put all your eggs in one basket, it’s important to take a step back and look at your current business processes. You have to get the strategy right. And it starts with alignment between your business and IT departments.
