Aligning Business Processes With IT: Avoiding Silos

by Simon Tucker
March 5, 2009

One of the most significant needs of businesses today is to align IT with business goals by aligning the processes that enable execution of those goals. However, this need is seldom met.

In many businesses, IT still operates in a silo, disconnected from the business and its needs. In discussing the importance of aligning business processes to IT, we must first explore how businesses execute on their strategies, which will illustrate its significant importance.

Figure 1 shows strategy being executed using a management framework that consists of gathering, understanding, debating, and deciding. This framework is supported and fed by business and management processes that are fed from the transactional areas of the business.



The white box below the management process framework is illustrated like a cog, linked to and driving another cog. Transaction and business processes inherently feed and drive each other. The red line in the white box depicts a process that:

• May originate in the transactional areas of the business (for example: step 1, a purchase by a customer)
• Then feeds a business process (step 2, pick and pack customer order)
• This kicks off another business process (step 3, ship the customer order).

Step 4 is where management can see reports on pick, pack, and ship efficiency. Step 5 records the shipping of the order, which updates management information in step 6, showing the order is fulfilled.

The black portion of the illustration can be thought of as business and IT. These two functions need to support the transaction, business processes, and management frameworks by enabling the alignment of processes and supporting technologies.

Finding a Focus

With the myriad of processes out there, where do you start when it comes to aligning IT with those processes? A good start is to consider the strategic goals of the company and determine what drives those goals and what processes support those drivers.

It’s also important to think about the business in terms of people, technology, data and processes. These four dimensions are critical when aligning IT with the business and its processes.

The medium that binds the elements together is technology; what makes it replicable is the process. If we holistically look at the business and map out the four dimensions shown in Figure 2, we see the critical need to align IT (technology) with business processes that help a business execute on strategic objectives.



To see who the business processes need to touch, we need to visualize the business as a whole. Figure 3 shows a generic view of a business with business functions across the top and layers of the business below. The strategic objectives appear at the top; the ultimate aim of the business is to sustainably execute them.