March 2017 Chairman’s Message
By Jim Jeffries, Chairman M&A Leadership Council
Until recently, the Information Technology (IT) function of an organization had been the servant of the business even when at times it took on a form of its own. IT was the implementation tool and enabler for the organization, but not necessarily a player at the strategy table. Information Technology’s role in the enterprise has included:
- Improved Organizational Workflow
- Finding Cost Reductions
- Creating Company Performance Enhancements
- Sustaining Service Levels
- Standardizing Processes
- Exploiting New Technologies
- And on and on...
The principal challenge is that there are very few instances of business-oriented IT strategies. Most are completely technology centric and focused purely on technology products. This makes it even more challenging to align the IT and business strategies. It is because we are constantly comparing apples with oranges.
Today, with mergers and acquisitions creating new business opportunities and channels to the market, IT must play an increasingly pro-active role in developing the long-term business strategy. Business leaders need to ensure that their IT and business strategy functions are completely synchronized towards common business-oriented goals.
The answer must be to undertake a radical overhaul to their approach, i.e. to start doing things differently. They must move on from the old world thinking of retro-fitting business functionality into an IT strategy, towards a business-focused approach that concentrates on new fundamentals.
The M&A Leadership Council hopes to help the M&A community with these challenges by offering the new The Art of M&A Business and IT Alignment, a two-day course on May 15 and 16 in Chicago. If you are a business leader responsible for creating value from acquisitions or the IT person responsible for rapidly connecting the systems, then you need to attend this course.
Hope to see you in Chicago,
