Organizational Alignment
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ITO Trends in the Mid-Market: Overcoming Challenges in the Current Climate
Paul Roehrig, one of Forrester’s leading analysts in the IT outsourcing space, and Anthony D’Ambrosi, COO of CIBER’s IT Outsourcing Division, discuss challenges based on recent yet-to-be published research on the mid-market space.

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Local Government Emergency Services: Setting Yourself Up for Success
This article, by CIBER’s A.J. Briding first appeared in IAEM Bulletin in October 2007

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04 Sep 2008
CIBER Wins $19 Million SAP Support Contract for Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission
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27 May 2008
CIBER Expands Presence in Little Rock
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Montgomery County, MarylandCIBER has won a $22.6 million contract with Montgomery County, Maryland to replace legacy information technology system with Oracle’s E-Business Suite.

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Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals
Louisiana Office of Public Health Selects CIBER for New WIC IT System
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Louisiana Department of Revenue, Office of Charitable Gaming
CIBER Builds Solutions to Automate Data Gathering
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“CIBER was easy to work with and competitively priced. They quickly brought a great deal of expertise and experience to the table, and delivered on their promises. We felt that we were in good hands, because the CIBER consultants we brought in had 'been there, done that" before.”

Steve DeMougin — Deputy Director for the Department of IT, State of Indiana

For more information about our Organizational Alignment services & solutions, please contact:

303.267.3876
rcaputo@ciber.com

Robin Caputo
VP, Marketing

 

Organizational Alignment

Government CIOs have the same concern as commercial enterprise CIOs.  According to a 2007 survey conducted by the publication Public CIO, government executives listed IT-business alignment as their No.1 IT management concern.  Similarly, a spring 2008 INPUT report noted that 69 percent of governors are embarking on IT alignment programs to increase accountability, consolidation, efficiency and transparency in state governments as a form of alignment ensuring that IT organizations can support their departments effectively and efficiently.   The nature of the problem is clearly understood by government leadership. 

While the issue of IT to business alignment has appeared at the top of the Society for Information Management’s annual survey for many years, the approach to attaining better alignment is not as easily understood.  Organizational alignment is a journey, not a destination.  Business landscapes complicated by increasing competition, ever-changing regulatory requirements, and other market forces require alignment activities to be undertaken on a periodic basis to ensure ongoing alignment.  Where an IT organization may have at one time been well aligned with the business units, continual changes in the business landscape can result in further misalignment.

The symptoms of organizational misalignment (between business and IT) are often easy to recognize.  Among the more visible symptoms are:

  • Usage of IT metrics as opposed to business metrics to define IT value
  • Business frustration with IT services and capabilities
  • Lack of enterprise strategy coordination
  • Limited institutional knowledge of the business within IT
  • Inability to communicate with business unit personnel using a business vernacular
  • Reactive IT organizational posture to business requirements
  • Dissociated decision-making
  • Lack of understanding of the business value an IT investment or service provides
  • Inability to tie IT investments directly to business strategies or objectives

Organizational Alignment Requires a Plan

Today, the approach by IT organizations to align themselves with the business is often undertaken in a less than thoughtful manner.  IT organizations may undertake pseudo-alignment activities arising from various channels including informal discussions, individual perceptions, governance structures, and requests by individuals often lacking the critical business context upon which to evaluate such activities.   Generally, these approaches have not been associated with formalized strategies or objectives focused on bridging the gap between business objectives and technology investments.   It is therefore easy to see how an IT executive could be more consumed with the value they can bring to the organization as opposed to enabling the business units to drive organizational value.  Improvements to IT offer limited value to an organization, but enabling the business to improve drives far greater organizational value.

The Journey

Aligning an IT organization with the business units or departments requires a thoughtful plan to be successful.  Here’s where CIBER’s expertise can help.  CIBER utilizes a framework with specific phases and prescribed activities to undertake Organizational Alignment.  These summary steps are:

Phase I – Strategic Planning

Identify business unit (or departmental) strategies and objectives that have been defined along with any measures identified to determine progress against those strategies and objectives.  Synthesize specific IT strategies and activities to support the business units in executing those strategies and achieving their objectives.

Phase II – Organizational Assessment and Definition

Assess the current IT organization against the capabilities required to achieve identified business objectives and the strategies and synthesized IT strategies and initiatives required to support the business units.  Define a target IT organization with the capabilities required to more effectively align with and support the business unit strategies and objectives.  Perform a gap analysis between the two organizations. 

Phase III – Organizational Planning

Develop plans (technology, organizational) that guide the evolution of the existing IT organization into an IT organization which aligns more effectively with the business units or departments.  Develop support plans (communication, resource, funding) to support the required changes.

Phase IV – Organizational Alignment

Execute the organizational alignment plans resulting in the transformation of the existing Information Technology organization.

CIBER: Your Partner On The Journey

CIBER has helped a number of governmental entities achieve tighter organizational alignment.  An example of how facets of organizational alignment can be applied to address a specific objective (enterprise IT consolidation) is identified below.  CIBER would like to partner with you to address your organizational alignment challenges.

case in point


State of Colorado Governor’s Office of Information Technology

Colorado Governor Ritter instituted the Colorado Promise which included an initiative to improve Information Technology efficiency across the state.  The Governor enlisted seasoned veteran Mike Locatis to lead the consolidation efforts.    CIBER was enlisted to assist the State in developing a consolidation plan and associated enterprise architecture governance.

CIBER facilitated sessions with the State IT management team to research existing practices in consolidation, develop a framework for consolidation, define enterprise architecture governance, address core consolidation issues and provide guidance on those issues.

The State of Colorado benefited through the process by leveraging a formal process to address consolidation planning and avoiding challenges that some other states have historically encountered.



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