CIOs must be conscious that their IT goals align with broader business goals. Cio.com recently compiled a list of six things CIOs need to know about business and IT alignment:
- The business is not your customer: This way of thinking can create a division between IT goals and business goals. Additionally, it can distract IT leaders from focusing on the company's actual external customers.
- You are responsible for business outcomes: CIOs can have a tendency to measure outcomes based on cost and return on investment of IT projects. However, aligning business and IT means that CIOs need to understand their role in overall business outcomes.
- Make sure your team is on board: CIOs can not be the only one working to align their business and IT goals. Alignment is an entire team effort.
- Innovate to beat out vendors: Vendors often sell directly to business leaders rather than IT. CIOs need to evaluate technology in terms of cost, value and risk to compete with vendors.
- Business may want to move at a different speed: CIOs need to prepare for business taking a more risk-averse approach and being comfortable with being a late adopter of technology.
- Business needs to understand what you do: IT leaders must be able to communicate with business leaders in terms that they will understand.