Strategies to Connect Information Technology With Business Goals

In many companies, you’ll often find that the business folks don’t necessarily get along with the tech folks. There are different assignments, different types of work, and different budgets within the understanding of internal money matters.

Misalignment of these two departments can be a major headache and a recipe for inefficiency. But, regardless of which side you find yourself on, by thinking through the five following categories, you can dramatically improve your overall communication as a company and much increase your chances for financial success and IT department satisfaction.

Understand Business Alignment

Before doing anything, it’s important to understand the theory behind the relationship connecting IT and business goals first. To this end, study alignment strategies from a 3rd party perspective, and see how that relates to your own business environment. In many cases, you can hire outside companies and contractors to do all of the heavy lifting for you, and your primary role in the process will simply be to communicate to them on a daily basis the requirements that each department needs.

Image Source: Pixabay

Create a Common Core of Knowledge

By having your IT and business sales departments interact regularly, they will develop a common language. Though this may seem a bit forced at first, eventually those relationships will become a keystone of much of what you’re trying to accomplish as a financially independent company. Some companies have tried to keep these departments away from each other because of conflict, but that separation eventually only causes varying degrees of stress and competition, especially when there are budgets to be considered, because of the difficulty of finding dollar metrics with communications and networking processes.

Use the Right Project Planning Apps

On your mobile devices, you can install project planning apps. These little apps are great ways to keep things under control and with you at all times. If your business and tech departments all have the same basic mobile solutions installed and set as reminders, that’s one less set of problems that can happen from issues regarding the appropriate flow of information.

Consider a Full Project Planning Solution

If just the mobile apps aren’t good enough, there are a number of full project solutions to engage IT departments with business departments and managers. These desktop solutions and super powerful and sync over everyone’s devices and computers simultaneously. Some of the more powerful aspects include internal e-mail systems and internal video chat systems linked to the program.

Promote Continuing Education

The final strategy to help connect information technology departments with business goals would be for you and your company to always promote continuing education outside of your normal job roles. Technicians should learn about business, and sales associates should learn about information technology, so they can communicate more effectively.