How IT Governance should be established in order to have a good alignment between IT, Business and external Service Providers

IT governance deals with connections between business focus and IT management. The goal of clear governance is to assure that investment in IT generates true value to business. IT governance is defined as the processes, structures and relational mechanisms that ensure the effective and efficient use of IT in enabling an organization to achieve its goals. IT and business alignment begins and ends with good IT governance. Business-IT alignment is the fit and integration among business strategy, IT strategy, business and IT structures. Research has shown that organizations where IT strategies and operations are aligned with business strategies and operations seem to be more innovative in use of new information technolo-gies. The objectives for this research are to find out the elements for a good IT governance and understand what are the components and requirements for an effective Business- IT alignment. The study will seek answers to the following three research questions: (RQ1) what are the elements for a good IT Governance” , (RQ2) “How to achieve a real alignment between IT, business and external service providers”, and (RQ3) “what are the drawbacks in the current IT Governance in the case company”. The research includes theoretical part and the empirical part. Theoretical part through literature review introduces the main concepts and frameworks. Empirical part describes the research methods. This study was conducted by using a qualitative and quantitative methods. The data was gathered via web survey in a case company where the author is currently working. The questions in the survey are based on theoretical framework called the Strategic Alignment Model. The survey was conducted in February 2020, the survey was sent to preselected persons in IT and Business. With the web survey, the target was to get the understanding what are the drawbacks with the current IT Governance and Business-IT alignment. As a result of the study, all research questions were answered. Based on the survey results in the case company, clear improvement areas were found in the areas of IT and business pro-cess understanding, roles and responsibilities, processes and collaboration. Recommenda-tions for the case company are made to improve the Business-IT alignment especially on tac-tical and operational levels

A model to assess customer alignment through customer experience concepts

Business and Information Technology Alignment (BITA) has been one of the main concerns of IT and Business executives and directors due to its importance to overall company performance, especially today in the age of digital transformation. For BITA has been developed several models which in general has focused in the implementation of alignment strategies for the internal operation of the organizations and in the measurement of this internal alignment, but, there is still a big gap in measurement models of the alignment with the external environment of the organizations. In this paper is presented the design and application of a maturity measurement model for BITA with the customers, where the customers are actors of the external environment of the companies. The proposed model involves evaluation criteria and business practices which the companies ideally do for improve the relationship with their customers.Comment: 12 pages, Preprint version, BIS 2019 International Workshops, Seville, Spain, June 26 to 28, 2019, Revised Paper

Correlating Architecture Maturity and Enterprise Systems Usage Maturity to Improve Business/IT Alignment

This paper compares concepts of maturity models in the areas of Enterprise Architecture and Enterprise Systems Usage. We investigate whether these concepts correlate, overlap and explain each other. The two maturity models are applied in a case study. We conclude that although it is possible to fully relate constructs from both kinds of models, having a mature architecture function in a company does not imply a high Enterprise Systems Usage maturity

Leveraging Open-standard Interorganizational Information Systems for Process Adaptability and Alignment: An Empirical Analysis

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to understand the value creation mechanisms of open-standard inter-organizational information system (OSIOS), which is a key technology to achieve Industry 4.0. Specifically, this study investigates how the internal assimilation and external diffusion of OSIOS help manufactures facilitate process adaptability and alignment in supply chain network.Design/methodology/approachA survey instrument was designed and administrated to collect data for this research. Using three-stage least squares estimation, the authors empirically tested a number of hypothesized relationships based on a sample of 308 manufacturing firms in China.FindingsThe results of the study show that OSIOS can perform as value creation mechanisms to enable process adaptability and alignment. In addition, the impact of OSIOS internal assimilation is inversely U-shaped where the positive effect on process adaptability will become negative after an extremum point is reached.Originality/valueThis study contributes to the existing literature by providing insights on how OSIOS can improve supply chain integration and thus promote the achievement of industry 4.0. By revealing a U-shaped relationship between OSIOS assimilation and process adaptability, this study fills previous research gap by advancing the understanding on the value creation mechanisms of information systems deployment

Towards a business-IT alignment maturity model for collaborative networked organizations

Aligning business and IT in networked organizations is a complex endeavor because in such settings, business-IT alignment is driven by economic processes instead of by centralized decision-making processes. In order to facilitate managing business-IT alignment in networked organizations, we need a maturity model that allows collaborating organizations to assess the current state of alignment and take appropriate action to improve it where needed. In this paper we propose the first version of such a model, which we derive from various alignment models and theories

Towards a pivotal-based approach for business process alignment.

This article focuses on business process engineering, especially on alignment between business analysis and implementation. Through a business process management approach, different transformations interfere with process models in order to make them executable. To keep the consistency of process model from business model to IT model, we propose a pivotal metamodel-centric methodology. It aims at keeping or giving all requisite structural and semantic data needed to perform such transformations without loss of information. Through this we can ensure the alignment between business and IT. This article describes the concept of pivotal metamodel and proposes a methodology using such an approach. In addition, we present an example and the resulting benefits

Business and Information System Alignment Theories Built on eGovernment Service Practice: An Holistic Literature Review

© 2019 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.This chapter examines previous studies of alignment between business and information systems holistically in relation to the development of working associations among professionals from information system and business backgrounds in business organization and eGovernment sectors while investigating alignment research that permits the development and growth of information system, which is appropriate, within budget and on-time development. The process of alignment plays a key role in the construction of dependent associations among individuals from two different groups, and the progress of alignment could be enhanced by emerging an information system according to the investors’ prospects. The chapter presents system theory to gather and analyze the data across the designated platforms. The outcomes classify that alignment among business and information system departments remains a priority and is of worry in different ways in diverse areas, which provides prospects for the forthcoming discussion and research.Final Published versio

Value-Based Business-IT Alignment in Networked Constellations of Enterprises

Business-ICT alignment is the problem of matching ICTservices with the requirements of the business. In businesses of any significant size, business-ICT alignment is a hard problem, which is currently not solved completely. With the advent of networked constellations of enterprises, the problem gets a new dimension, because in such a network, there is not a single point of authority for making decisions about ICT support to solve conflicts in requirements these various enterprises may have. Network constellations exist when different businesses decide to cooperate by means of ICT networks, but they also exist in large corporations, which often consist of nearly independent business units, and thus have no single point of authority anymore. In this position paper we discuss the need for several solution techniques to address the problem of business-ICT alignment in networked constellations. Such techniques include: -RE techniques to describe networked value constellations requesting and offering ICT services as economic value. These techniques should allow reasoning about the matching of business needs with available ICT services in the constellation. - RE techniques to design a networked ICT architecture that supports ICT services required by the business, taking the value offered by those services, and the costs incurred by the architecture, into account. - Models of decision processes about ICT services and their architecture, and maturity models of those processes.The techniques and methods will be developed and validated using case studies and action research