Business Technology Management - BTM Alignment, Synchronization and Convergence

BTM Alignment, Synchronization and Convergence

Many enterprises perceive the alignment of business technology with the business to be a sort of management “Holy Grail”. From a BTM perspective, alignment can be defined as a state where technology supports, enables, and does not constrain the company’s current and evolving business strategies. It means that the IT function is in tune with the business thinking about competition, emerging threats and opportunities, and the business technology implications of each. Technology priorities, investments, and capabilities are internally consistent with business priorities, investments, and capabilities. When that’s the case, the company has reached a level of BTM maturity that relatively few have achieved to date. Alignment is a good thing, and sometimes sufficient to serve a particular business situation.

There are other higher states to consider however, and for some enterprises, synchronization of technology with the business is the right goal. At this level, business technology not only enables execution of current business strategy but also anticipates and helps shape future business models and strategy. Business technology leadership, thinking, and investments may actually step out ahead of the business (that is, beyond what is “aligned” with today’s business). The purpose of this is to seed new opportunities and encourage far-sighted executive vision about technology’s leverage on future business opportunities. Yet the business and technology are synchronized in that the requisite capabilities will be in place when it is time to “strike” the strategic option.

Finally, there is the state of convergence, which assumes both alignment and synchronization, with technology and business leadership able to operate simultaneously in both spaces. Essentially, the business and technology spaces have merged in both strategic and tactical senses. A single leadership team operates across both spaces with individual leaders directly involved with orchestrating actions in either space. Some activities may remain pure business and some pure technology, but most activities intertwine business and technology such that the two become indistinguishable.

BTM supports and guide enterprises to any of these three states. Whether the appropriate level for a company is alignment, synchronization or convergence, effective BTM is the source of dramatic competitive successes in today’s and tomorrow’s marketplace.