Seminar reveals business-IT alignment as CIOs’ top concern
ConvergenceAsia staff
15/11/2007

Business-IT alignment is the greatest challenge that Chief Information Officers (CIOs) are currently facing, according to survey results from the CIO Roundtable Seminar: Driving the Value of IT into Businesses.

The CIO Roundtable Seminar, jointly organised by software company Compuware and academic institution INSEAD, was held in August 2007. The objectives of this seminar were to examine the evolution of the CIO’s role and explore how IT can deliver strategic value to businesses.

Over 30 top-notch IT honchos from the public sector and private industries including financial services, media services, education and engineering participated in this event.

Increasingly, IT is becoming a critical tool in driving innovation and competitive advantage in organisations and as shown from our survey findings during the CIO Roundtable Seminar, business-IT alignment is the foremost concern of most top C-level technology executives, said Sachin Khanna, Managing Director for Asia South, Compuware.

To address this issue, CIOs must work collaboratively with the business to establish, identify and understand strategic goals and elicit effective business requirements in order to develop high-impact IT applications and processes, put IT Governance Framework in place to prioritise IT spent that creates business value and provide a business oriented view of how IT Services are performing in support of critical business processes, he said.

Other key survey findings from the seminar also revealed the critical initiatives that the CIOs will be embarking upon in the next 12 months. The most prevalent initiative that emerged was the alignment of IT to business requirements (43 per cent). Other remaining projects include business continuity management (38 per cent), application performance management (38 per cent), information management (29 per cent) and project and portfolio management (24 per cent).

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