Brunel University's Business Class: This is how you marry IT and business

In the third part of their exclusive series for silicon.com Brunel's Professor Robert Macredie and Dr Mark Lycett say three Cs - communication, consultation and coordination - are the key to the successful integration of IT systems and business.

Just as employees no longer have the security of a ‘job for life’, businesses no longer have the luxury of resting on laurels. To keep up with the market, companies need to develop the flexibility to cope with the changes in business processes and rules, which impact IT systems and the people that use them. The ideal scenario is that IT not only supports the business as it strives to remain competitive, it actually enables change.

To achieve this, there is a fundamental need for the IT and business functions of any company to understand each other’s needs and objectives, in order to align the two effectively. For this to happen, there must be a certain fluidity – it’s not about information capture and documentation, it’s about a process of continual dialogue. Ultimately in comes down to 3Cs – communication, consultation and coordination.

Communication: The goal is that IT and business must work together to a common aim, finding a shared language and aligning objectives. This is an inherently difficult process – investigating what users of IT systems want can often be an arduous task. There is often a general unwillingness for employees to express clearly what they want – either through an inability to communicate effectively what it is they require or, worse still, a general lack of knowledge and understanding of what they actually need – they just know they need something!

The first hurdle to overcome is the widely accepted understanding that IT and business departments speak completely different languages. Each particular community has its own ‘patois’, which it uses to articulate needs and objectives - and mistranslation is rife.

The other point to consider is that many businesses have multiple stakeholders with differing views and objectives - all of which need to be identified and catered for. Businesses, and individuals with the responsibility for making the final decisions on IT investment, need to pave the way for open and honest feedback. Only by doing this can they create an environment conducive to freedom of expression so that each of these stakeholders’ objectives is taken into account.

Consultation: This is the second vital issue. It's common wisdom that a bad workman blames his tools but how does this translate to the IT arena? If systems don't carry out the tasks that people want, it's often because either no one has taken the time to consult the most important people in the process, the users, or the users have not provided adequate or accurate feedback when asked.

Employees throughout the business must understand what the strategies and objectives of the IT system are – and how they support the objectives of the organisation as a whole. Then, as an ongoing focus, everyone in the business can strive to find ways to align the functions and objectives of both IT and business departments.

Once a thorough understanding of objectives has been gained, establishing the right kind of environment for feedback is the next step. Senior management need to trust in their staff and be open to communication, giving everyone the opportunity to have their say. It is wise to take the opportunity to voice opinions and views on an IT system with which you will directly or indirectly be involved.

Coordination: The final issue. Many companies are using relationship management (RM) as a physical manifestation of the need for effective use of the 3Cs throughout their organisation. Relationship managers facilitate communication and consultation throughout the organisation and coordinate the results. While this can be an effective way of aligning business and IT objectives effectively, there can be a tendency for management to perceive this RM function as a service provision, which can imply the abdication of responsibility of the fundamental need for communication, consultation and coordination. Put simply, this can often lead to the relationship managers being turned into scapegoats, blamed for all ills.

A relationship manager should be seen as a couturier, expertly stitching different areas of the organisation together. The success of relationship management is ultimately measured by how seamlessly diverse areas of the business align their needs and work together to achieve their objectives. Ironically, if the relationship management is effective, the need for them should gradually reduce.

For all of these three Cs there’s a mutual duty from all involved to participate fully. As much as it’s a director’s task to understand the complexity of individuals’ work and decide whether it’s possible (or beneficial) to automate it or at least make technology central to its achievement, equal responsibility resides with the users to communicate what it is they need from any IT implementation.

By maintaining open channels of communication, more informed questions about the value of technological solutions to certain aspects of an organisation’s work can be asked and answered at all levels. It’s this that will enable business and IT directors to determine the true value of IT - and start working towards enlivening information systems, rather than all too often seeing them as a dead weight.

Professor Robert Macredie and Dr Mark Lycett are leaders of ‘Fluid Business’, a groundbreaking research project within the Department of Information Systems and Computing at Brunel University. They will be writing for silicon.com on issues of technology and business over the coming months and can be contacted by emailing FluidBusinessTeam@fusepr.com. Or email us with your opinions at editorial@silicon.com.