Align Technology Strategy with Business Goals for Competitive Advantage and Growth
Outcome-driven and on-demand technology advisory and consulting.
Alignment between IT and Business is Critical
In today’s hyper-competitive world, your IT is no longer just a support function – it is your competitive edge. It power every aspect of your business, from engaging customers and delivering innovative products to streamlining operations and outmaneuvering the competition.
Success requires IT leaders to
- Forge strong relationships with business leaders to identify opportunities
- Create effective communication strategy to convey the business value of IT
- Attract diverse and passionate talent to drive innovation
- Future-ready IT Strategy to capitalize on industry trends
- Use sustainable technology to drive environmental, social and governance (ESG) outcomes
However, this requires navigating through many challenges:
Business Relationship Management
Operational issues are draining leadership bandwidth
Day-to-day operational issues like outages, security, compliance, and vendor management are taking up too much of your tech leaders’ bandwidth. This is hindering your ability to prioritize strategic initiatives.
Business stakeholders unclear about tech’s value
Communicating the value of tech to non-technical audience is an art. Most make the mistake of explaining the features and specifications instead of explaining what the tech does or how it benefits real people. Another mistake is not letting the audience experience the solution e.g. using prototypes, mock-ups, and data for feedback.
Clear tie between IT investments are business initiatives
Tech leaders must fall in love with a business problem first and then look for technologies to solve them and not the other way around. For example, instead of rallying for a new SaaS solution to replace the current HR system, identify the challenges to see if the SaaS solution will solve them.
Meeting business outcome expectations of all stakeholder
Nearly two-third IT projects fail – missing deadlines, significantly exceed budget, or miss the stakeholders’ expectations. Engaging with stakeholders using techniques like Design Thinking gives insight into their journey and better understanding their motivations and expectations.
IT Strategy
Linking technology impact to measurable business outcomes
Business leaders typically focus on revenue growth, profitability, customer satisfaction, market share, operational efficiency, risks, long-term sustainability etc. Many organizations continue to operate in silo structure, with IT as one of its silos. This creates a disconnect where IT has its own metrics instead of linking them to those of the lines of businesses they serve.
Staying current with the latest tech trends
Staying current with new technology trends requires investment to acquire a technology as well as developing skills within the organization to experiment and build with the technology. In some ways, the challenges described earlier can impact IT leaders’ ability to secure the needed investments.
Build vs. Buy decisions are overwhelming
As organizations push for more innovation, seek more control, and look to optimize IT cost, they tend to bias their decisions towards building software. Except for domains which have well established software platforms like ServiceNow, SAP, and Salesforce, the first instinct is to build. This traps organizations into a spiral of maintenance, support, and technical debt. Instead, organizations need to consider like business outcomes, time to market, operational efficiency, and risk to make build vs buy decisions.
Partners prioritizing sales over advisory
A partner that brings independent advice instead of maximizing their own value. A partnership where negotiations are focused on contract terms instead of long-term success metrics.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) strategy hindered by knowledge gap
The rapid advancement of AI is putting pressure of IT leaders to act fast. However, the complexities of the technology, hype, cost, and ethical concerns are stalling decision making. The fear of mistakes and reputational damage is adding to their worry.
Enhancing Business Continuity with IT
With IT core to most operations, is it enhancing Business Continuity posture or introducing interruption? Traditional Disaster Recovery approach groups applications into broad buckets of RTO and RPO. This results in gold-plating less critical systems.
Talent Strategy
Skill Gap
Sole focus on deliverables and productivity limits employees’ ability to venture outside their day job. A proactive program is required to fosters a culture of continuous learning and professional development.
Maturing innovation capabilities
Innovation cannot happen when employees’ operate within their silos or are afraid of taking risks. Stepping outside of IT and partnering with Line of Businesses (LOB) is necessary to spark ideas. In addition, empowering employees to take risks and experiment will provide the safety net necessary to look for unconventional approaches and creative thinking.
Developing the next generation of IT leaders
Many organizations struggle to fill key leadership positions. When these positions go unfilled for a long time, it impacts strategic initiatives and key decision making. A strategy to build a pipeline of talent and succession plan is needed to have a pool of next generation leaders.
DevOps Strategy
Breaking down the Dev and Ops silo
Many organizations jump to software and invest in automation to implement Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Delivery / Deployment (CD) as part of their DevOps strategy. The more important aspect, however, is the organization structure where dev and ops teams continue to operate in silos. A true DevOps strategy promotes an operating model where dev and ops come together to deliver reliable* systems that meets and exceeds the expectations.
* Reliability is one of the core pillars of well-architected frameworks like AWS, Azure, and GCP. Further, new disciplines like Site Reliability Engineering and Chaos Engineering have emerged to make organizations more proactive in addressing reliability concerns.
High-performing team
High-performance is not about measuring the output, but is characterized by teams that are self-directed, collaborative, flexible, accountable, and transparent. While Agile is the core foundation for building such a team, but empathy and trust, where each member is invested in the success of others, creates a true high-performing team.
Secure and Compliant by design
Security and Compliance is everyone’s responsibility. A secure and compliant by design approach requires detailed examination of all steps of the DevOps lifecycle and integrate necessary controls into each of those steps. There will always be trade-offs where the teams would need to balance the cost of implementing the controls against the risk appetite of the enterprise. Many teams struggle because the risks, its business impact, and the risk appetite are not clearly defined or articulated.
Governance that effectively manages IT risks
Centralized IT governance can stifle creativity with slow decision making, while a decentralized governance can lead to chaos and shadow IT. Instead, an adaptive governance model requires a mixture of strategies: centralized bodies for decisions that have a strategy level impact (for both business or IT); cross-function bodies for items that affect business domains; and decentralized for individual technologies and systems. All of these bodies need to collaborate each other.
Strategic value of IT in M&A
Due Diligence
Most mergers & acquisitions focus on financial aspects and overlooking the value IT can bring through synergy or the drag incompatible systems and culture can have during or post transition.
Rationalizing IT organization and systems
Mergers and acquisitions require complex decisions to pick the best solution, merge data, integrate systems etc. Similarly, exits and spin-offs require protecting sensitive data, intellectual capital, and clear separation to avoid regulatory and legal issues. Without careful planning, these could directly impact the M&A timeline.
Future State Strategy
It is easy to get distracted with technical debate on architecture, governance, ownership, etc and leaving the strategic reason behind the M&A in the back burner. Organizations miss the opportunity to create a future state architecture and work their way backwards.
Our Experience
We have held various c-suite leadership roles and bring practical experience driving strategic reliability initiates for various sized organizations across many industries. Our passion for learning has kept us moving to new roles, exploring new challenges. This has given us exposure to many aspects of running an enterprise-scale business.
“Your leadership in bringing a large team together and aggressively driving the timeline enabled us to resolve a major contractual and compliance issue.“
VP, Government Services
“You have always challenged the status quo in a positive way and brought innovation to drive change.”
VP, Architecture services
“You were brought into a challenging situation. You analyzed the complex requirements and provided reasonable solutions.”
SR. Architect, integration services
Our Services
Assessment
Our assessment services help organizations identify critical gaps in their IT-business alignment. We analyze your current IT landscape, evaluate the effectiveness of your IT strategy, and assess your organization’s maturity in areas like cybersecurity, cloud adoption, and data analytics. We provide actionable insights and recommendations to address these challenges and improve your overall IT performance.
Advisory
As your trusted advisors, we guide C-suite executives in making informed technology decisions. We translate complex IT concepts into actionable business strategies, help you understand the potential impact of emerging technologies, and advise on how to leverage IT to achieve your business objectives. We work closely with you to develop and implement a technology roadmap that aligns with your overall business vision.
Coaching
Our coaching programs empower IT leaders to navigate the complexities of today’s digital landscape. We provide guidance on leadership development, strategic thinking, communication skills, and change management. We help IT leaders build strong relationships with business stakeholders, foster a culture of innovation, and develop their teams to achieve peak performance.
Mentoring
We provide mentorship and guidance to IT professionals at all levels to enhance their skills and advance their careers. We offer personalized coaching on technical skills, leadership development, and career planning. We help IT professionals stay current with the latest technologies, develop a growth mindset, and build a successful career in the ever-evolving IT landscape.
Our Approach
Business Outcome
Often times organizations latch on to an idea or a solution without clearly defining the outcome they are seeking. We help you define your outcomes first and then work your way back to determine how to achieve them.
Agile Philosophy
Every organization has a pace at which it works. But its culture holds it back from increasing its velocity. We coach your teams to break down the deliverables into incremental and measurable chunks.
Exponential Growth
Creating a culture where teams have maniacal focus on outcomes and are obsessed with delivering measurable results will drive exponential growth.
Contact Us
Are you ready to elevate your IT Strategy to the next level?
As a boutique consulting firm, we offer personalized attention and tailored service without the overhead of a large firm. Contact us today to discuss your specific needs and explore how we can help you achieve your goals.
Rajesh Jaluka
Founder
