IT to Business Alignment? Surely It’s Time To Move On From Just Talking About It

[stephenmann]

In a recent Computing.co.uk article, journalist Danny Palmer wrote about the results of a cloud research project conducted by EasyInsites on behalf of managed service provider Adapt. The headline was: "Businesses can't get all they want from one cloud provider — Adapt." And the key statistic was:

"Of those businesses surveyed, 53 per cent don't believe that a single cloud provider is capable of meeting all of their requirements."*

But there was another statistic in the article that resonated more with me, that …

"… Just a quarter feel that cloud providers really understand their businesses"

For me it was an interesting question to ask — "do your cloud providers understand your business?" But it was also an important question to ask; if you recognize that cloud providers (or cloud service providers) provide a service, or services, rather than technology.

IMO, however, not only is this question (about whether the providers understand their customers' businesses) important, so is whether the corporate IT organization thinks it is important for the provider to know. Surely if the corporate IT organization has never felt it wise to invest time understanding the business why would they expect third-party suppliers to? Also, consider the following question:

"If a cloud, or any other external, service provider asked your corporate IT organization questions about the business, would they be able to respond correctly?"

How would you reply? Yes? No? Maybe? Or "eek"?

And could they do more harm than good in answering the question? Of course the cloud service provider could be directly engaging with a line of business (or other business function) but please bear with me on the importance of business knowledge …

IT to business alignment? At least 10+ years of aspiration

Notwithstanding the fact that IT is actually part of the business, not something to be aligned with it, the connectivity of IT strategies, plans, policies, and operations with the needs of other business functions is often questioned. A Forrester blog from November 2012 contains a great graphic which shows this disconnect between corporate IT organizations and the people they serve — in this instance that "the business doesn't rate IT very well (and sometimes IT doesn't rate itself well)."

This is nothing new, and hence the section title. But the issue continues to be important, if not more important than ever.

Consider the findings of the Pink Elephant Think Tank

At the recent Pink Elephant conference, a pre-selected group of IT service management (ITSM) industry notables came together in a Think Tank. And, whilst the real fruits of their labors will be outlined in another blog, there was a key point from Think Tank member Charles Araujo. That:

"IT really needs to start understanding the business."

Which was an interesting point for Charlie to make after 30+ years of corporate IT functions. And after 10+ years of talking about aligning IT to the business. But I can't disagree with him.

Services require consumption; consumption requires need …

… and those needs need to be understood.

I'm a mathematician at heart so I can't help trying to be logical. For me, services must meet a need to be consumed. It's all a QED thing.

Unlike traditional IT where infrastructure and applications are built or bought and maintained, third-party delivered services are defined, sourced, and paid for (and paid for again and again and again). Hopefully with some form of service management activity too. Where the associated service mentality and service delivery model is no longer about technology itself but meeting business needs.

James Finister, another Pink Think Tank member, summed it up nicely when he stated that the SIAM contracts that his team works with (at TCS) are not written in terms of servers and storage. Instead they are, for example in the case of a large automobile manufacturer, written in terms of automobiles being produced. It makes sense, the supplier needs to understand the customer's business. But can they?

Yes of course they can. But how easy will it be for them to do so if they are working through a corporate IT organization that doesn't know enough about their business, from corporate purpose through to operations? It's a worrying thought, that the corporate IT organization is potentially an inhibitor to third-party services.

So where is your IT organization in terms of business understanding (I don't want to hear talk of alignment)? What have you done to improve that understanding? And what's your view of cloud, or any third-party, service provider needing to know more about their customers?

I hope you will take the time to comment.

* This was a survey of UK businesses