Technology Alignment: What is the Value?

What is the Value of Technology Alignment?

Companies are relying on IT more than ever.

While IT wasn’t a top priority in the past when it came to setting business goals, it should be today as any disruption to IT infrastructure can lead to significant consequences.

When we say technology alignment, we are referring to the process of ensuring that the IT infrastructure of an organization is aligned with its business strategy and objectives.

IT plays a significant role in the security, availability, efficiency and flexibility of your business while ensuring your costs are optimized to support your business objectives.

So what is the value of aligning IT with your business goals?

Aligning IT with Your Business Goals

Security: Every organization not only has a different appetite for risk but also has different needs when it comes to security. There’s an inherent challenge of spending enough without spending too much. Organization leaders want to have a safe space to openly discuss concerns of, “How do I know I’m doing enough to protect my business? ” It’s easy to overspend or underspend on security if IT is not properly aligned with your business goals.

Availability: If your organization relies on your IT infrastructure for day-to-day workflow, any disruption to that affects the bottom line. Your IT solution should remain operational nearly 100% of the time, but it is important to calculate the value of redundancy measures in relation to your business goals. No one wants to pay employees to sit around, but too much redundancy is expensive.

Efficiency: Every organization strives to be more efficient, and unhappy employees are inefficient. Your IT systems and the teams who support them don’t have to contribute to employee dissatisfaction: No one likes unanswered IT requests or waiting on a slow computer. However, efficiency is more than just eliminating negatives — it’s improving positives. The goal is to find workflows that can benefit from IT improvements like automation to free up resources to pursue higher-value work.

“Technology is constantly evolving, and business practices need to keep up. Technology alignment allows you to meet your goals to respond to market changes and take advantage of new opportunities.”

Cost Control: Reducing unnecessary expenses is top of mind for every organization. Identifying areas for improvement and where costs can be reduced allows you to allocate resources more efficiently. By understanding your business goals, you can make strategic decisions like when to buy a new server or move your operations to the cloud. Additionally, if you work with a managed service provider, their IT team’s expertise and experience will be at your disposal, without you having to shoulder the entire burden of IT expenses.

Increased flexibility: Technology is constantly evolving, and business practices need to keep up. Technology alignment allows you to meet your goals to respond to market changes and take advantage of new opportunities. For example, if your goal as a business is to grow through mergers and acquisitions, it can be significantly easier to bring on new locations when you have your data and workflows in the cloud rather than on-premises servers. Knowing your desire to grow, you can plan ahead to make each merger and acquisition seamless.

It’s important to note technology alignment is not a one-time thing. You must review and optimize your existing technology infrastructure to ensure that it’s aligned with your business goals and objectives. Essentially, it’s a regular audit of your environment to ensure you are meeting best practices.

It’s similar to yard work: the grass needs to be cut, the hedges need to be trimmed and tree branches need to be pruned. You constantly have to keep up with it as it grows and changes.