This Report Answers How Nordic Companies Achieve Alignment between Business and IT

2008-05-29 15:08:21 -

www.researchandmarkets.com - Research and Markets (www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c93318) has announced the addition of "Nordic IT Organisation 2007" to their offering.

Probably the most important challenge facing Nordic CIOs today is how to best link IT and business strategies and goals.

Aligning business and IT:

The purpose of a company is to make money and it does so by serving

the needs and wants of its customers profitably. In order to achieve this, the whole company must strive towards this goal, including the IT unit. Alignment between business and IT means that their strategies and goals must be in agreement, they must work in the same direction and in sync with each other. But how can this be achieved? There is more than one way to achieve alignment of business and IT in a company. Close cooperation between business and IT leaders is an obvious necessity. To establish good cooperation however, there are several strategies and requirements, such as ensuring that business and IT people are able to communicate in the same language and terms.

Key Questions?

- How do Nordic companies achieve alignment between business and IT?

- Does the use of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) help Nordic CIOs support business goals?

- How common is SOA among Nordic companies and what are their plans?

Using SOA to achieve business IT-alignment:

SOA or Service-Oriented Architecture has been promoted as an important vehicle to improve business-IT alignment. SOA is a collection of services that communicate with each other. A service is a coherent block of functionality that represents a distinct function or activity within the business. SOA is thought to promote business-IT alignment for several reasons. One reason is better ability for IT to adapt to the changing needs of business, because SOA services can easily and quickly be organised and reorganised into new end-to-end solutions, reducing the risk of misalignment. Probably the most important reason however, is that since services are represented in high-level business terms, IT executives are encouraged to think in terms of business functions rather than IT functions.

The report maps out Nordic companies' approach to improving the alignment of business and IT in general and the use of SOA to do this in particular. This entails looking at such areas as the relative importance of different methods for improving alignment and the impact of SOA on

success with various IT goals. Furthermore, the report also looks at the key success factors for adopting a SOA strategy and the obstacles to implementing it.

The report is designed to:

- Help companies to determine what the best methods are for improving the alignment of business and IT by showing the experiences of other Nordic companies.

- Show what IT goals are most likely to be positively affected by implementing SOA.

- Provide a basis for deciding whether SOA would be a suitable option for the individual company.

- Aid the individual company to evaluate how it should prepare its organisation to best benefit from SOA.

- Show how the degree of hierarchy in the IT organisation affects the success in reaching various IT goals.

Method:

The survey, which is quantitative, has been carried out by means of a survey of leading decision makers such as CIOs, IT strategists, CFOs and CEOs in 100 large (+500 employees) Nordic companies. The interviews were made in May 2007. The results from the survey is presented and analysed broken down by industry (Trade, Services, and Manufacturing).

Target Group:

The report is written based on mainly the needs and requirements of the IT management of large Nordic companies. The target group of the report is primarily: CIO/IT managers, CFOs, Controllers, IT strategists, Consultants and CEOs. The report will however also be of interest for vendors of IT products and services in order to better understand their customers.

CONTENTS:

Executive summary

Introduction

Strategies for aligning IT and business

IT priorities

Feasibility and need for SOA

SOA in the Nordics

Objectives for adopting SOA

Obstacles to SOA success

General IT-business alignment measures

Organisational hierarchy

Conclusions

For more information visit www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c93318

Research and Markets
Laura Wood, Senior Manager
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