When one company acquires another, future growth is
often uppermost in mind. And placing bets on where potential growth
is likely to come from is the habitual practice of any good
business strategist.
Gartner, in its paper
The Seven Levers of Growth, is exhorting IT directors to adopt
a more proactive and enterprising mindset when identifying IT
investment areas. It is no longer enough to do a good job on
bedrock IT, or comply with frameworks.
This entails, says the research firm, developing an intimate
knowledge of the strategic growth plans of your business, deciding
how to harness IT resources to contribute directly to growth, and
consulting closely with senior management to ensure that IT does
not merely support the business, but drives its growth.
A corollary of this playing the part of an agent of change is to
train one's focus away from areas of the business that do not
support sales or reduce costs. This might mean sticky conversations
with the HR or finance function, but it should also mean warm and
dewy-eyed discussions with sales and marketing.
It might mean adopting an outsourcing strategy which is less
about divesting a dog, and more about rendering a star more
stellar. Mick James' outsourcing case study on Threadneedle
Investments offers a good story of this kind.
It might also mean charging back IT to other departments.
Charging back, if it is perceived as highlighting IT's role as a
contributor to the business, is a useful stratagem. There is,
however, a danger that it could reinforce a division between "the
business" and IT, with the former as the disgruntled "customer" of
the latter.
For there is no is no magic formula for business-IT alignment.
And, as an example, to derogate frameworks such as
ITIL and Cobit because they do not necessarily vouchsafe
business growth would be folly indeed.