Strategic Alignment Challenges: Communication

In a recent post, aidancrowley7 alluded to the role of the CIO as one of the key factors in implementing strategic alignment. Certainly, this is one of the biggest challenges that hinder the implementation of strategic alignment.

Another major issue preventing the implementation of strategic alignment is one that exists in the marketing world, also. In order to gain a better sense of what previous posts have discussed about strategic alignment in the world of IT, it’s important to discuss it in relation to various other functions as well. I will use author M. Strahle’s previous publishing to illustrate my point.

In his article entitled “Marketing and Sales: Strategic Alignment and Functional Implementation”, Strahle discusses the importance of an understanding between marketing or product managers, and sales people. Such an understanding is vital in order to ensure they are fully knowledgeable about current or future strategies. They both need to be fully briefed on what the current and future plans are when it comes to marketing tools such as promotion and product design.

The same can be said for companies operating in the world of IT and IS. Just as the aformentioned post discussed the CIO and their role in the strategic implementation of alignment, it’s also necessary for a high level of communication to exist between the CIO and those who will be necessary in this process. I believe that is what poster o4ac may have been referring to when they discussed strategic alignment being “interlinked in the structure of an organisation” when they ran through the steps of achieving strategic alignment. The structure of an organisation may refer to more than just the CIO, or those making the decisions.

This communication becomes even more essential when such implementation concerns IT, or any system that encompasses any kind of technonlogical features. When the process involves systems that are highly complex and concern more than a few departments in an organisation, it goes without saying that regular communication is imperative.

To conclude this post, I believe that a communication issue may be a major roadblock in strategic implementation and IS today. Perhaps we should keep that in mind during further discussions on this topic.

Strategic Alignment and Planning

As most other posts have already pointed out, Strategic Alignment is most concerned with achieving harmonization of an organisation or business’s objectives and goals. This means that all the elements of a business must work together, not against each other, in order to bring about Strategic Alignment. As d112221671 has discussed (https://sopinion8ed.wordpress.com/2012/10/17/an-introduction-to-business-is-alignment/), these elements must form some type of “fit” with its IS objectives in order to create some form of cohesiveness in a firm’s future targets.

Naturally, this type of co-ordination can only occur if the business has a strong vision of its own future. In order to give the organisation the motivation it needs to move forward, there needs to be a clear understanding of the strategic path which they intend to take, in both the short term and the long term. As stated on businessdictionary.com (http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/strategic-planning.html#ixzz29aenQ3B5), strategic planning starts with the end result, and works its way back in order to figure out how to achieve its goals.

As previously stated, Strategic Alignment is all about planning. It’s easy to say that a business can bring about this future, and bring all of its visions together, but if each of these visions isn’t clear, realistic and concise, then strategic alignment may be impossible to begin with. That’s why I feel it’s important to note early on in our investigation that Strategic Alignment starts right at the very beginning of the business strategy process, before IT functions even come into play. First everyone within an organisation should figure out what they want to achieve, to see if it’s even possible, then come together to reach some form of agreement moving forward.

Are there any other elements in the early stages of Strategic Alignment that anyone feels is equally important as planning?