Information technology has progressively moved from the periphery to the center of corporate strategy. This brief is not a prescription or an exhaustive recommendation but only brings to fore some of points to trigger in depth analysis on IT-Business alignment.
To build an effective foundation for execution, an organization has to pay attention to its operating model, enterprise architecture, and IT engagement model. Such a foundation calls for formulating an IT strategy that aligns with the business strategy, building internal partnerships between IT and business units, and reengineering of IT as a business partner. IT must enable, support, and drive organization growth. Creating or changing the information strategy impacts corporate strategic planning process, organizational structure and power equations, information systems responsibilities, and technology stack.
The first step to having an empowering IT agenda is to recognize the associated cost implications, complexity, and consequences. “Defensive IT” ensures operational reliability while “Offensive IT” helps organizations leapfrog the competition through clever use of emerging technologies and carries an element of risk. Each style has unique governance needs and must be lead by a skilled communicator who can challenge entrenched in-house thinking. An important point to keep in mind is that achieving and sustaining IT-business alignment is difficult and often treacherous.
Health sector in general has been lagging in adopting information technology for a variety of reasons like lack of demonstrated cost effectiveness, interoperability, high adoptions cost, and confidentiality requirements. Some of the challenges are unique to the health industry alone but many are common to industries at large and it may be worthwhile taking lessons from outside of this vertical.
Bringing information strategy into the boardroom makes the organization agile and equips it to respond quickly to a fast changing and evolving market. It brings together motivated experts, empowered decision makers and digitized process. A strategic execution officer or the CIO, under the umbrella of a “Center of Excellence for Innovation and Technology,” could evangelize the need for strategic information management, make IT investment decisions, transition management, and coordinate enterprise change projects.
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