Aligning Business and Technology for Competitive Advantage

Report on Business &
Technology Alignment
Initiate Success | Structure to Achieve | Deliver Always
April 2015

As Managing Partner and Chief Solution
Architect, Chris is a Senior Management
Consultant, Strategic Business Architect and
Change Management practitioner with 20 years
applied leadership and consulting experience.
With broad cross-industry experience with
organizations of all types and sizes, Chris offers
a unique perspective on a variety of strategic
organizational and technology issues. A
systems thinker by nature, Chris offers clients
an unobstructed wide-angle lens to tactical
and strategic opportunities and offers value in
delivering a specific and measurable roadmap.
Introduction 3
A Problem with Priorities 4
What’s Important 7
The Trust Factor 8
Implications 11
Table of Contents
About the Authors
A senior Information Technology Services leader
with expertise in IT services delivery, application
management and application delivery services.
Andi has broad, international knowledge base
with work for clients in retail, oil & gas, insurance,
hospitality and telecommunications industries
worldwide.
His experience includes e-commerce, retail supply
chain, telecomm service management, point-
of-sale, hospitality and accounting systems. He
is a strategic thinker and a natural leader and
has developed the ability to quickly understand
the needs of a client’s business and associated
IT projects, and translate these into strategies,
priorities and practical action plans.
2
Chris Enstrom Andi Gabb

Organizations are walking a tight rope of
expectationswhenitcomestoprioritizing
and implementing technology. Our
research, based on the data collected
in February and March of 2015, clearly
demonstrates the chasm continues to
be large between the solutions being
delivered by corporate IT departments
and solution providers, and the needs of
the users of these solutions.
We uncovered a number of interesting
and disturbing trends in our research. Of
utmostimportanceisthecleardisconnect
between solution expectations and
solution implementation. CIO’s and
their counterparts within IT departments
clearly have an uphill battle in building
bridges and executing business-oriented
solutions for their customers.
The importance of delivering relevant
solutions to customers must not be
underestimated. The results show a
continued lack of clarity between IT and
business when it comes to investment
priorities. Perhaps this is due to
miscommunication, or perhaps it is a
breakdown in expectations. Regardless
of the cause, this research clearly
demonstrates ineffective investment
decisions and poor execution of
technology solutions.
In our survey results, a full 62%, almost
two-thirds, of respondents indicated
there is no clear link between business
objectives and technology investment.
This expectation gap is significant.
When combined with the consensus that
budget constraints continue to be an
issue, the importance for organizations
to effectively evaluate their technology
investments has to be one of the core
priorities for 2015 and beyond.
Three-quarter of respondents indicated
that ‘aligning technology strategy to
business objectives’ was either very
important or absolutely essential, while
only 24% stated that their organization
was either above average or very high
on the effectiveness scale when it comes
to achieving that alignment.
Moving forward for the rest of 2015
and into the coming years, change is
mandatory. Bridging the gap between
expectations, objectives, planning and
execution must take top priority if
companies wish to derive greater value
from their IT investment wallet. While
this is not a new problem, most have yet
to take advantage of the opportunity to
better utilize technology in enabling core
business functions.
3
“The IT-business relationship in most organizations is often
a fractious one rather than a marriage of equals. Business
teams often find the IT department’s high costs and long
implementation timelines unacceptable.”
The Digital Transformation Symphony: When IT and Business Play in Sync, CapGemini Consulting. 2014.
1 | Introduction

For most organizations, achieving good return on IT
investment does not depend simply on appropriate
technology choices and their successful deployment.
Many organizations, for example, face frustration with
an increasing sprawl of initiatives, driven by conflicting
agendas, and hampered by competition for funding.
Opportunities abound for organizations
wishing to deliver greater value
through IT. In order to produce results,
someone has to take charge and lead the
organization through a complete review
of the implementation of technology
solutions and how they align with core
business objectives.
In our survey, we were seeking answers
and insight in the following five areas:
1. What are the important goals that
organizations are striving to achieve
in 2015 and how well equipped are
they to succeed?
2. How effective is IT in delivering what
organizations need?
3. What aspects of change management
are important to organizations?
4. What trends in project management
are important to organizations?
5. What are the most important
technology objectives and the biggest
technology challenges for 2015?
Our results are clear. A disconnect
between desired solutions and
implementation capabilities is similar
across all respondents.
4
2 | A Problem with Priorities?
We first asked respondents to rate the
importance of nine capabilities in their
organization.
In order of most important to least
important, the ranking result was:
1. Achieving superior operational
effectiveness
2. Aligning technology strategy &
planning to business objectives
3. Implementing strategic technology
solutions
4. Executing successful organizational
change management
5. Implementing innovative solutions
6. Improving collaboration with other
workgroups and departments
7. Designing and implementing process
optimization
8. Improving project and program
governance
9. Understanding and defining a
business architecture model
Attempting to decipher prioritization is a
significant issue facing most companies.
While the results show a clear order of
priority, the key finding of importance

is that respondents rated six of the nine
with above average importance (Figure
1).
Understanding that most every business
relies heavily on technology to enable
core business functionality, the difficulty
lies in prioritizing investment when
everything is deemed to be important.
The second critical question we asked
in our research was to rate the overall
effectiveness of the organization in the
same nine capabilities. In order of most
to least effective, these are the results:
1. Achieving superior operational
effectiveness
2. Aligning technology strategy &
planning to business objectives
3. Implementing strategic technology
solutions
4. Implementing innovative solutions
5. Improving collaboration with other
workgroups and departments
6. Designing and implementing process
optimization
7. Improving project and program
governance
8. Executing successful organizational
change management
9. Understanding and defining a
business architecture model
At first glance, there is a clear correlation
between the importance and effectiveness
rankings. In deeper analysis however,
only the top two capabilities were ranked
above (only slightly) average effectiveness
(Figure 2) in contrast to the high level
of importance assigned to them as
objectives in the previous question.
As troubling as this expectation gap is,
the challenge faced by organizations is
complicated by the fact that we found
a significant disparity between the
effectiveness of organizations to deliver
solutionsandtheimportancethebusiness
places on those solutions. The results
show a large confidence gap between
the importance and effectiveness across
every dimension.
When plotted together, the results are
5
Figure 2 | The Ability to
Execute on the Most Important
Objectives is a Challenge in Many
Organizaitons
Figure 1 | Challenges Exist
for IT when the Business
Deems Everything Important

alarming. Not only is there an issue
with prioritization of objectives and
execution, the ability for organizations
to deliver on even the most important
capabilities remains a challenge.
The four most important objectives also
show the largest confidence gap. There
are a number of conclusions we can draw
from this aspect of the research.
Collectively, the sheer volume of work
IT is being asked to accomplish in light
of budget constraints is unmanageable.
Part of the challenge facing IT leaders
is the competing priorities the business
puts on delivering solutions. How can
we expect IT to deliver value to their
customers if the customers themselves
cannot agree on what is important?
The skill gap between IT capabilities
and business objectives is large.
The confidence gap presented clearly
shows that desire and ability are far apart
when it comes to delivering on what’s
important.
Drawing upon this finding, we have seen
that overall effectiveness of execution is
low.Inordertodrivecompellingdialogue
and structure projects and delivery of IT
services,itisimperativethatITleadership
engage in strategic conversations with
their counterparts on the executive
team. Driving value through technology
requires not only clear priorities aligned
with organizational objectives, but also
the ability to “skill-up” the IT workforce
to execute on those objectives.
When viewed as a whole, the nine
parameters on which we gathered data
provide line of sight to larger, longer-
term issues with delivering value through
IT and enabling business to achieve
objectives.
Combined, the confidence gap is clear
evidence that initiating success requires
alignmentacrosstheorganizationaround
global (organization-wide) benefits.
A new way of assessing, measuring and
implementing technology roadmaps
is a must. No longer can organizations
continue with the status quo.
6
Figure 3 | The Difference Between what
the Organization Wants and the Ability to
Deliver Shows a Shocking Disconnect.

In ranking objectives for 2015,
respondents singled out operational
effectiveness and aligning technology
strategy as the top two, with strategic
technology solutions and organizational
change management essentially equal
third.
Operational effectiveness as an objective
is somewhat intuitive and perhaps
too general, however, it is apparent
that organizations see technology and
change management tightly coupled
with operational improvements. One
point of note here could be that, while
IT can reasonably be expected to have
responsibility for the effective use
of technology across organizations,
ownership of change management, not
usually as clearly assigned, needs a home,
with the associated skills employed or
contracted.
Of interest, when taken together, these
fourobjectivesrequirealignmentamongst
each other. Operational effectiveness
(or more correctly improving it) is fully
dependent on the ability to manage
change. Additionally, in many cases, it
also necessitates building technology
solutions that enable said effectiveness. It
is likely no coincidence that the leading
objectives identified in the research have
such a common theme.
7
3 | What’s Important
“… organizations see
technology and change
management tightly
coupled with operational
improvements.”
In correlating the results between
important objectives and effectiveness
to execute, one message drowned out
all others, namely that organizations are
poorly equipped to implement OCM
successfully despite it being high on the
list of objectives.
The message? If you are targeting
organizational change this year and
your performance objectives depend
on achieving superior operational
effectiveness as a result, then you should
be looking for help.
OCM is no longer for amateurs and the
continued innovation in the world of
technology is causing organizations to
continually rethink how they work and
how they are organized. If prolonged
periods of dysfunctional operation are
to be avoided subsequent to increasingly
frequent process and organizational
changes, then OCM must be embraced
as a professional discipline and adopted
as a strategic business function.
Organizations are going to struggle most with
implementing organizational change.

When asked to agree (or not) with
statements reflecting trust in IT serving
the best interests of the business, there
was no clear vote of confidence. While
respondents agreed somehwat that IT
delivers projects with tangible outcomes,
IT has clearly not yet reached the lofty
heights of “trusted advisor” status. (The
question relating to IT as a trusted
advisor scored the lowest). Nearly half of
respondents were on the ‘disagree’ side of
this statement. A troubling fact indeed!
Perhaps most significant was the lack
of strong agreement with any of the
statements painting IT in a positive light
(Figure 4). For the question regarding
delivering projects with tangible
outcomes, the results shows only a
slightly higher than average ability.
While there was a definite hierarchy in
the results, the spread of scores from
top to bottom was quite narrow (7%).
This indicated to us that opinions were
fairly diverse regarding the effectiveness
(or lack thereof) of IT. While confidence
cannot be described as high, there
appeared to be no one factor which stood
out as a black mark against those of us in
the business of providing value through
technology – maybe we are just mediocre
at everything!
A final observation in this section is
regarding the central issue of business
and technology alignment. Of all
the statements in this section, “My
organization has a clear link between
business objectives and technology
investment & implementation” was
the one that had the biggest spread
of opinions. (i.e. more respondents
“strongly agreed” or “strongly disagreed”
with this statement than any other. Also
an equal number agreed as disagreed.)
There are clearly some organizations
that are succcessfully maintaining
the business objective/technology
investment link, and those of us who are
not in that group would probably be well
8
4 | The Trust Factor
“The challenge for the project management practitioner,
however, is how to maintain the engagement of
key executives and to ensure that they have a clear
understanding of what sponsorship means—specifically
how to deliver the balance between driving accountability
and energizing people.”
PMI – Enabling Change Through Strategic Initiatives
Figure 4 | Demonstrating and Delivering
IT Value Continues to be a Challenge in
Many Organizations.

9
advised to seek them out and make note
of their methods.
Leadership support and increased
awareness are the important trends in
Organizational Change Management.
Being in the business of Change, we
were very interested to uncover views
on the trends that we have witnessed
on the OCM landscape. Questions
addressed, in our view, are the nine most
prevalent trends recently observed. No
runaway winner emerged, but clearly
people felt that leadership support, need
awareness and emphasis on training,
communications and reinforcement are
important.
The most recent best practices
benchmarking report on Change
“Regardless of the degree of formality, the most essential ingredients are based on
communication and mutual understanding between business and IT management
to ensure that IT resources are prioritised according to business needs and IT-based
business solutions that enable their users to create real value for the business are
delivered. This requires business leadership to take more direct responsibility and
accountability for IT and education on IT related issues than perhaps traditionally has
been the case. This responsibility cannot be delegated. Without open communication
and mutually respected contributions to the development of IT and business strategies,
full alignment will not happen and value will not be delivered.”
IT Alignment: Who’s in Charge? Rolling Meadows, IL: IT Governance Institute; 2005
Management from Prosci® shows a
common theme with the results that
we found. In their report, the top three
trends in change management were:
• Greater awareness of the need for
change management
• Broader application of change
management
• Increased leadership support for
change management
As organizations continue to adopt
and mature their change management
capabilities,emphasisshouldbeplacedon
continuous training and communication
of the role and the impact that consistent
change management has on the
organization and the individuals affected.
The challenge with change management
Figure 5 | Leadership Support and
Enhancing Understanding for Change
Continues to be a Top Priority

lies primarily in the lack of leadership
support. This proves to be the leading
obstacle to the overall success of change
management. Our view is that it will take
the commitment of a few to begin the
journey to bring change management
into the fold as a key organizational skill.
Creating awareness requires courage
in the face of poor leadership support.
This dichotomy will prove to be one of
the largest (if not the largest) obstacles to
overall success.
In project management, traditional skills
like leadership, communications and risk
management, won the day over Agile. Do
we need to get back to basics?
Opinionsaboutprojectmanagementwere
clear. Leadership and communication
skills, as well as risk management, led
the field in terms of what people felt
was important - interesting reading for
project managers wondering whether to
add Agile education to their resume, or
to reinforce their more traditional PM
skills and taking some extra training on
issue and risk management.
One of the more fascinating findings
in this research was the relatively low
importance (second-to-last) placed
on improving program and project
governance. Given the prioritization
issues already discussed coupled with
obvious challenges with budgetary
constraints, we have to wonder if there
is a solid understanding of the definition
and role of program governance.
Figure 6 | Building Support for Greater
Involvement Across the Organization
Requires Leadership Engagement and
Communication.
10

Responses for technology objectives,
as well as for technology challenges,
were predictably varied, but when
we categorized these into groups that
reasonably reflected their commonality,
patterns emerged.
Objectives were dominated by true
technical goals (e.g. growth of cloud
computing, optimizing existing
technology,andmoregenericallykeeping
up with technology change), alignment
(e.g. better value from technology,
alignment of associated costs to revenue,
and aligning processes to technology)
and project performance (e.g. keeping
projects on track, executing projects
faster and more effectively, becoming
more agile).
Nothing surprising really stood out
in the objectives, except perhaps that,
if this survey had been conducted 10
years ago, the responses may well have
been very much the same (apart from
the specific new technologies). Despite
the continuing pattern of revolutionary
advancement that has characterized the
IT industry over the last 30 years, it seems
that we still consider delivering projects
and applying technology effectively to
business to be on a par with adopting
the technology itself, when it comes to
setting objectives.
Taken collectively, the objectives we
identified as part of our research and
the results gathered show a definitive
lack of prioritization. We believe if
organizations are to identify one critical
objective, it must be to focus on planning
and executing a definitive technology
roadmap - consensus plan aligned with
tangible business objectives.
Engaging key organizational leadership
in building alignment between the
business and technology strategy will
drive constructive dialogue, align
technology strategy with business
objectives and provide the basis for IT to
execute successfully.
11
5 | Implications
Objectives for 2015

12
The focus for 2015 and beyond
“They [CIO’s] should view their responsibilities through an enterprise-wide lens to help
ensure critical domains such as digital, analytics, and cloud aren’t spurring redundant,
conflicting, or compromised investments within departmental or functional silos. In
this shifting landscape of opportunities and challenges, CIOs can be not only the
connective tissue but the driving force for intersecting, IT-heavy initiatives—even as the
C-suite expands to include roles such as chief digital officer, chief data officer, and chief
innovation officer.”
Deloitte – Tech Trends 2015
When the smoke cleared on all the
analysis of the survey, there were a few
key messages that made their voices
heard above the clamour:
• While there are clear objectives for
2015, low confidence in the readiness
of organizations to achieve them
is a significant risk. Most worrying
for those with substantial business
changes in their sights for this
year is that business architecture
modeling and organizational change
management were the lowest rated
in effectiveness. These two key
pillars are critical components of a
successful business change program.
• IT is still not meeting business
expectations of the value for
investment in technology. This was
most apparent in the responses to
the open question regarding 2015
challenges, with half the respondents
citing concerns that indicated
alignment between business goals
and technology would be an issue for
them this year.
• Organizational benefit from IT
investment will not increase until
such time that leaders begin with the
endinmind.Often,projectslosesight
of their intended outcomes. Whether
it is due to evolving requirements,
resource challenges or perhaps poor
project management – the end result
is projects that fail to live up to their
intended benefits or expectations.
Starting with a comprehensive and
common understanding of the benefits
creates a solid foundation for planning,
designing and executing projects.
Organizations must take a good hard
look at the project planning and
Challenges for 2015
When it came to technology challenges,
the picture was very different.
Again, we categorized responses to
identify patterns, but this time a full 50%
of the responses fell into the “alignment”
category and this made it the clear
leader. Examples of alignment challenges
included:
• Balancing value and investment
• Prioritization
• Proving TCO and ROI achievement
• People acceptance
• Managing conflicting priorities in
multiple business areas
• Technology that doesn’t support
business processes
• Understanding what the business
needs versus what the business
wants.
In a distant (almost equal) second place
were technical, budget and governance
challenges.
Our findings demonstrate that there is
a clear mandate for change. The largest
obstacle we identified is engaging
leadership in taking ownership and
engaging in collaborative, constructive
and tangible dialogue in building a plan
for change.
Prioritizing benefits and architecting a
roadmaptoachievemeasurableoutcomes
is critical. For those organizations that
choose to accept the challenge, a true shift
is necessary. Bridging the gap between
expecations and execution requires
commitment and focus.
We are in no way suggesting this is an
easy journey, however, we do believe
there is significant advantage for those
organizaitons capable and committed to
accepting the challenge.

Building a connected framework for investment decisions and tactical project
execution requires commitment and necessitates maturation in the Business-IT
relationship. The obstacles presented are not so large they cannot be overcome, but
let’s not underestimate the effort, they are challenging to even the most mature and
collaborative organizations.
Start small; engage differently on the next project. Start with the end in mind and
engage in useful and collective dialogue about the intended outcomes and benefits
of the project. With this change in focus, business sponsors and IT leaders can
have constructive conversation about intent, benefits and responsibilities and thus
establish a more solid foundation for mutual success.
Final Word
At Mosaic we help small and medium-sized
businesses (SMBs) maximize the return on their
information technology investment. We call this
“Enterprise IT for SMB”.
It means making sure that, as your company
grows, your technology keeps pace. It means
making sure that your data is safe and that
you are protected from viruses and denial of
service attacks. And it means taking advantage
of the latest in technology in order to delight
your customers, optimize the efficiency of your
About Mosaic
13
governance they have in place and put
greater focus on outcomes. Creating
work plans and milestones aligned
with outcomes provides a clear link to
delivering value. Adjustments to project
resources (people, budget) can be
evaluated against outcomes and benefits,
and ramifications against the original
intent can be evaluated.
• Selling change management as a
foundational skill is critical. As we
discovered, change management
is the largest confidence gap we
identified. The challenge lies in the
fact that many leaders do not see the
benefit, and research across the globe
shows that the largest contributor
to change management failure is
the lack of sponsorship. What a
conundrum!
Redefiningtheroleofchangemanagement
is mandatory if organizations want to
take advantage of new solutions. In
most organizations, small pockets of
change champions exist, waiting for the
right moment to deliver a compelling
pitch to engage and execute successful
change. The ability to effectively “sell”
change to senior leadership is of utmost
importance.
• Prioritization is key. The first
challenge that must be addressed
is the overall need for IT to deliver
everything. Technology solutions
have become the catchall to fix every
problem an organization encounters.
Fixing investment and project
priorities has to be at the top of the
list.
Building consensus for a technology
roadmap that is aligned with business
objectives must be first and foremost.
Providing strategic direction based on
outcomes allows the IT organization to
focus its resources, initiate projects in
concert with the business and structure
IT services around tangible benefits.
operations and beat the competition.
Today your SMB can’t do business without
technology, but it needs to grow as you grow, it
needs to be as risk free as possible and you need
to exploit new technologies to give you an edge
over your competitors.
All of that adds up to Enterprise IT for SMB.
Contact
P.O. Box 171
Station M
Calgary, Alberta
T2P 2H6
info@mosaic-inc.ca
(403) 700-4546

Aligning Business and Technology for Competitive Advantage

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