Strategic alignment between IT and business is never achieved by accident. In order to communicate a shared vision among the leadership, management should utilize a set of different communication tools to outline the to-be operating state.
The SAR framework examines the organization’s set of initiatives across 4 different set of areas (quadrants): Process Improvements, Technology Enablement, People Planning and Risk Management.
The Strategic Alignment Roadmap (SAR) tool is developed to help organizations document the set of initiatives needed to bridge the gap between the current state operating model and the desired future state operating model.
Why Business and IT Strategic Alignment is important in the digital era?
Strategic alignment explores how different functions within an organization work together to achieve a common goal. Business and IT alignment, including their strategies & structures, is a key hot topic among the c-suite today. With the new technologies being on the rise (e.g. Blockchain, AI, and Machine Learning), I see that different stakeholders, both from Business and IT, are on the hook again to use the tools and people they have to create a competitive advantage for themselves.
In order to realize the new business objectives in the digital era, including benefits realizations and regulations compliance, companies need to create an alignment between different stakeholders. This alignment is a great challenge since different departments, different leaders and different visions usually are discussed, where I see more often that different departments work in silos.
What is the Strategic Alignment Roadmap (SAR) tool and how it can be applied?
To overcome the challenges of Business and IT alignment, I developed this Strategic Alignment Roadmap (SAR) tool. The SAR tool can help companies create a holistic view of the different programs to communicate the different strategic initiatives among all the stakeholders. Usually, I view my clients programs or initiatives fall into these different areas:
Process Improvements: Activities management undertake to re-engineer their current processes to optimize or overcome a slow or negative business activity; this can be a back office or an operational process.
Technology Enablement: Programs management establish to introduce new or enhance current infrastructure, data flows, or information systems used to support business operations.
People Planning: Projects management execute to establish the right size, right roles, right skills and right structure of the organization’s operating model.
Risk Management: Activities management follow to either comply with existing regulatory requirements or to comply with upcoming new technical regulations.
In order to be able to communicate and view the different programs and align them to the business objective, I have decided to develop this quadrant view. The quadrant view starts with outlining the business objective or vision in a statement (e.g. Be the online Retail leader in digital solutions to increase revenue & customer retention). For each of the programs companies try to mobilize, they are plotted on the SAR quadrant tool (e.g. #1 initiative and #2 initiatives)
These programs are ranked against the impact and the value to the business objective (y-axis): high, medium and low. Then, it is mapped against a timeline in mind (x-axis): short (1-2 years), medium (3-4 years) and long (5+) term.
The key aspect to this quadrant view is the different zone levels, which I call them “priority zone”. Depending on ranking criteria (i.e. the Value and Timeline proposition), the program point is plotted in the appropriate priority zones. Obviously, the red zone, whatever goes towards the center, is considered the most significant short-term projects that should create the momentum the company needs to achieve their business objective.
Now that I have introduced this concept to you, we will explore how to measure impact, document timeline and even get the buy-in from leadership on the different projects they need to pursue in future parts. I’ll also share a completed example to show this framework and tool in action.
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Strategy+ Series: At Signify Solution, we believe in providing advisory and assurance services that help our clients better plan and solve their business problems. Strategy+ is our set of frameworks and our solutions we implement at our clients. Strategy+ posts are our way to share our knowledge, allowing us to have a bigger reach and impact at our clients.
Please contact me directly at mostafa@signifysolution.com to connect, chat and see how we can help you out.
I help companies create a total view of the different projects they need to pursue as well as challenge the impact of each of these projects against the business objectives established by the leadership.
The views, information or opinions expressed in this short article are the views of my own. All information in this article is provided “as is”, with no guarantee of completeness, accuracy, timeliness or of the results obtained from the use of this information.
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