Prior to the 80s, businesses were driven solely by their business strategy, which was seen as the core driver to achieving a competitive advantage. The belief was that the proper planning, selection and implementation of business resources would lead organisations to gain headway in market-leadership between themselves and their competitors.
The 80s and early 90s, marked specifically by the advent of the personal computer and coined the technology boom, saw information technology become mainstream in business practices. This was evidenced by a shift in mindset, whereby organisations began to apply greater focus to IT strategy to gain competitive advantages over key players in their industries.
This approach was, however, subject to much criticism by industry experts as the late 90s gave rise to the Y2K debacle. Organisations found themselves questioning their heavy reliance on technology and a new thinking was born. With such a great dependency on IT to create competitive advantages, what were organisations to do when that technology became redundant or ran into problems? It therefore made more sense for IT strategies to support business strategies rather than vice versa and so business leaders found themselves, once again, refocusing their energies on business strategies to gain market leadership.
This long-standing tug-of-war between IT stakeholders and business stakeholders, each group wanting the prize of core determinant strategy for competitive advantage, led to these divisions eventually working in silos: right next to each other but with separate objectives and agendas. Business was concerned only with fulfilling the goals of the business strategy, IT only with fulfilling the goals of the IT strategy and very seldom did these two areas communicate or work collaboratively toward common goals for the benefit of the organisation. The general perception each stakeholder group had, that a lack of knowledge in the other's speciality disqualified dialogue, meant a general reluctance to 'talk'. Additionally, collaboration within divisions was hindered as, often, cross-communication between sub-divisions did not occur.
The next shift in thinking that occurred was to integrate business processes so they operated under a single business strategy and to integrate IT processes so they operated under a single IT strategy. This move further separated IT and business as they functioned independently of each other. The problem was that this approach did not completely address the issue of operating in silos as, although each division was now better aware of what was going on in their sub-divisions, they were still unaware of what was happening outside the boundaries of their individual divisions.
The ensuing approach was then to begin aligning IT strategies with business strategies. The assumption was that the alignment of the strategies would, firstly, address the issue of operating within silos and, secondly, would follow through to an aligned implementation. The result should then be an alignment of business processes with IT systems which would result in greater benefit to the business. The problem, however, was that aligning strategies did not necessarily result in the aligned implementation of the strategies and therefore the divisions were still operating at cross-purposes and not meeting the common goals of the organisation.
While, in an ideal scenario, alignment of strategies is a great idea, it is not always maintained from the development through to the implementation phase, and hence the outcome is not always as favourable as expected. It therefore makes more sense for businesses to invest their time in developing business and IT strategies that are integrated with each other rather than merely aligned to each other. This then leads to an integrated approaches and an integrated execution of strategy. BSG (Africa) believes strategies remain separate, non-aligned and unable to meet company goals when the team responsible for delivering on the strategy has very specialised skills and is unable, or reluctant, to take cognisance of the others' needs or views. "This highlights the need for the implementation team to be cross-skilled, to be able to assimilate both business and IT needs and to deliver on them", says Ian Munro, Associate Director of BSG (Africa).
Munro states that teams should be cross-skilled and be able to fill the gap and function as a single unit with a continuum of skills. Having a facilitator who is able to form a bridge between skills is not a viable solution. There almost needs to be an overlap of skills within a team. "The age of trying to bridge a gap is over, as very seldom does this solve the problem. Upon completion, the resources used to bridge the gap must now move on to the next project, leaving the void open again. It is no longer about bridging the gap, it is now about eliminating the gap completely by creating a consolidated implementation team, delivering on an integrated consolidated goal and ensuring that both business and IT are integrated and acknowledge each others' needs," says Munro.
Integration is about creating one team which understands both IT and business needs and which has the capability to deliver benefit on those by 'filling' the gap, rather than bridging it.
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