The Internet provides to an organization the potential for total connectivity with all of its customers and suppliers and, hence, permits the integration of a number of its key activities-including marketing, advertising, sales, order fulfillment, distribution, customer support, market research, market feedback, and product design. In order for these activities to work well together, they must be coordinated and aligned so that they are working together within a strategy to achieve the overall objectives of the organization. The alignment team must therefore consist of experts in marketing, communications, and information technology. BPR redesigns business processes so that the efficiencies of using computers can be maximized. Alignment takes those reengineered processes and aligns them in a way to maximize the flow of information that arises from the connectivity of the Internet, EDI, or any other network that connects the firm to its market and its suppliers.
Alignment is to the Internet and connectivity what business process reengineering is to computing.
When the microcomputer was first introduced, it allowed working groups within an organization to pursue their own information processing strategies to fulfill the objectives of their particular division. Workgroups often found themselves in conflict with other working groups and with their management information system department, which lost control of the information processing activity within their organization. Because of the volatile way in which the Internet is penetrating the business world, connectivity, like microcomputing when it was first introduced, is poised to once again disrupt the information and communication functions of many organizations. This is a pattern that has repeated itself each time a new information technology has been introduced. A period of chaos ensues in which new applications and methodologies are discovered that are often in conflict with the techniques of the past.