It's not up to IT alone, however, to carve out this new organizational structure. Structuring for success demands that CEO, CIO and line of business managers work off the same page both strategically and tactically. CIO's can no longer implement solutions for the sake of technology.
Line of business management must have business plans that call for collaboration and coordination with partners and customers. Similarly, the executive team and CEO must have a vision, informed by their leadership partners, which supports the direction of the new business model. And each party must demonstrate a commitment to the new structure with action, not rhetoric.
While this may sound simple, in practice many organizations are finding it is easier to get systems to communicate than the organization and its people aligned. And this tendency for human misalignment is precisely why a new organizational model is desperately needed.
By establishing a three-way governance between executive leadership, management and IT, organizations can more easily map technology to business objectives, and ultimately, drive success. Together, CEO, CIO and line of business management can establish a business information architecture strategy that ensures linkage and powers e-business drivers with new technologies.
Putting the latest and greatest technology in place is no longer enough to ensure an organization keeps pace with its competitors. By fine-tuning the organizational structure and ensuring alignment of business and technology leadership and processes today's e-businesses can go a long way toward driving operational efficiency, and ultimately, building better customer relationships.
Jack W. Wagner is Marketing Executive, Global Application Solutions at IBM. He can be reached at jwagner@us.ibm.com.
