Our ability to manage business technology has not kept pace with our creation of new technology.
Let me stop for a moment to define ‘‘business technology’’: the application of technology to deliver a business capability or automate a business operation, in other words, the right technology to meet the business objective. In many organizations there are still two camps–technophiles and technophobes–and if they aren’t at war, they are at the very least wary of each other. In too many organizations, the ‘‘business side’’ comes up with a plan and throws it over the wall to the ‘‘technology side’’ for implementation. Because technology is so embedded in the way things work today, these two sides should have been sitting and planning together from the very beginning.
To say technologists and business managers haven’t been sitting at the same table discussing business plans and objectives is a bit of a misstatement. The disconnect that leads to gaps in business intent and technology execution often happens when these stakeholders leave the table. Technophiles will interpret the directives and desires of their business counterparts through their lens, and independently make modifications. Why? Most technophiles believe they know technology better than their line of business managers. Thinking like that leads to systems that are suited best for the designers and not the users.
These outcomes threaten to marginalize technology’s role in value creation at the very time that it should be brought closer to the business than ever before. What appears at first blush to be the fault of the technologist (‘‘Can’t you make this stuff work?’’) is really an organization’s failure to unify business and technology decision-making managers.
It is not the invention of a new technology that matters so much as it is its application–understanding its role when developing a strategy or designing an organization or its processes. As much as enterprises need a plan and strategic direction in developing and deploying technology, they also need a common language that’s bound by common objectives.
For many enterprises or operations, alignment of business technology with the business has been considered the Holy Grail. Alignment can be defined as a state where technology supports and enables but does not constrain the organization’s current and evolving business strategies. It means that the technology function is in tune with the business thinking about competition, emerging threats, and opportunities, as well as the business technology implications of each. Technology priorities, investments, and capabilities are internally consistent with business priorities, investments, and capabilities.