What it is
Our Strategy Alignment practice area ties your IT strategy to your business strategy.
We help our clients to align, translate and ultimately, execute their IT strategy so it supports, rather than hinders, the business in achieving its goals.
Why it is important to you
Our collective experience, combined with three decades of analysis and research by many others, shows that organisations that successfully align their IT strategy with their business strategy will outperform those that do not.
A major study of 160 organisations in 2003 conclusively demonstrated that competitive advantage for IT-reliant organisations was predicated on tight alignment of the IT strategy with the business plan. The greater the alignment of IT strategy with business strategy, the more likely the business will perform strongly.
Aligning the IT strategy with the business strategy leads to increased leverage and more focused execution of IT assets, leading in turn to increased performance.
So why don’t more companies develop their capabilities to ensure they align their IT to support their business goals?
The simple answer is that alignment, with its accompanying processes of translation and execution, is extremely difficult.
Formidable roadblocks get in the way of translating a strategy into achievable and executable processes, and can seriously injure its implementation. And it’s not a one-off activity …..
"Strategic Alignment is not an event but a process of continuous adaption and change." [7]
Transpire’s approach systematically addresses the common challenges that our clients face by redefining a strategy into actions that can be successfully (and repeatedly) executed.
Distilling an IT strategy into prioritised, achievable and measurable steps is not taking the easy path. It’s taking the smarter path to success.
How we improve alignment
We set up our Strategy Alignment practice to equip our clients with the capability to determine how closely their IT strategy supports the business goals, and to monitor and change their IT portfolio’s alignment to meet their future needs.
We believe that formulating the best IT strategy requires three essential characteristics of those involved:
- They bring with them significant practical experience in developing and executing a strategy
- They exhibit creativity under pressure that is balanced with the capacity to apply methods appropriate to the situation (rather than following a regimented methodology that may not suit an organisation’s circumstances), and
- They have the skills to engage effectively with stakeholders at all levels in an organisation.
Our approach to aligning IT strategy with business strategy is based on these three beliefs. We use three key constructs.
- Strategy alignment – aligning the technology strategy so that it serves the business strategy and needs.
- Strategy translation – turning strategy into practical solutions that can deliver benefits for the business.
- Strategy execution – putting the plan into action in repeatable, successful steps.
This simple three-construct framework ensures that we take a practical approach to innovative solutions, that we avoid dead-ends and that we do not lean too heavily on theory.
Our execution follows a five-step process that we call our ALIGN method. Each step is designed to produce stated deliverables which establish our client’s readiness, at the client’s discretion, to proceed to the next step. As the illustration shows, our approach is progressive, developing practical solutions and business benefits in sequence so that our clients stand on firm foundations before we stretch their boundaries to embrace the next step.
Transpire's Align Method For Strategy Alignment
