Innovative IT departments are challenged with aligning technology initiatives with the enterprise's overall strategy. However, more often than not, the corporate strategy is not expressed in IT terms, but rather in terms of business functions, processes, or products. Bridge this gap by mapping technology resources to the enterprise's value chain.  

IT Must Understand the Business

Enterprise priorities are often articulated using business terminology, such as "improve customer service" or "reduce time-to-market." In order for IT to make sense of this, IT decision makers must dissect the enterprise's value chain into its constituent technologies. The value chain consists of those components, processes, and services that collectively deliver value to customers. Mapping IT to the value chain requires that IT leaders understand how technology affects business processes and how IT resources are used at a tactical level. 

Consider the following example (Figure 1), based on Michael Porter's Value Chain Framework. Here we...