Business functions separated by a common language.
By: Paul Oliver
Tags: Erp, Analytics, Information Technology, Business Intelligence, Line Of Business

“Two nations divided by a common language”, this quote normally attributed to Oscar Wilde is about Britain and the USA.

Since my daughter has become engaged to a Brit, this is a frequent occurrence in my family.

So when I was reading the latest Gartner CIO survey results and read the below chart -

Top 10 Business Priorities

Rank

Top 10 IT Priorities

Rank

Increasing enterprise growth



1



Analytics and business intelligence



1



Delivering operational results



2



Mobile technologies



2



Reducing enterprise costs



3



Cloud computing (SaaS, IaaS, PaaS)



3



Attracting and retaining new customers



4



Collaboration technologies (workflow)



4



Improving IT applications and infrastructure



5



Legacy modernization



5



Creating new products and services (innovation)



6



IT management



6



Improving efficiency



7



CRM



7



Attracting and retaining the workforce



8



Virtualization



8



Implementing analytics and big data



9



Security



9



Expanding into new markets and geographies



10



ERP Applications



10



My first thoughts were to the quote above. When the line of business, be it finance, marketing or another department talks to IT or vice versa you can see from the chart above that they are speaking English, but not the same language.

On the left business is saying what they want to DO and on the right IT is saying what they should BUY and IMPLEMENT.

The issue is who is ensuring that the right side from IT will DO what business wants on the left side.

That is an important exercise that both line of business and IT must do is not just at budget time, but throughout the year.

Let’s start with Increasing enterprise growth.

What is IT doing on the right to increase growth?

1. Analytics and BI can identify untapped markets, great customer sales potential and run tests to improve market success of new products/services.

2. Analytics, Collaboration technologies and ERP apps tied to Mobile technologies can provide field sales the ability to outshine competitors in front of customers.

Delivering operational results -

1. Again analytics and BI can play a large role in provide visibility to internal processes, tie that to mobile technologies to speed decision-making and leveraging optimized ERP applications to improved processes.

2. The most obvious is that Cloud computing, Virtualization, and Legacy modernization can reduce IT cost and thus help the bottom line.

Reducing enterprise costs — see above

We can go through the entire list, but you get the idea. The important note here is that both IT and the lines of business should have their strategies and tactics matrixed to clearly demonstrate alignment is clear. Also, they need to communicate, measure and promote this alignment throughout the company during your fiscal year and across years for longer range projects.

Performing a constant translation is important, as this year it is Cloud, Analytics, and BYOD requiring translation from the IT to the LOB side. Depending on your industry there are several business terms IT will need the business to ensure they have clear translations.