Aligning business and IT goals ? a demanding task

Most senior business executives have growth, innovation, better protection against risks, cost control, resource efficiency and a stronger ability to cope with constant change as major business objectives for the years to come. These same executives view targeted investments in IT solutions as important elements in achieving those objectives. That immediately raises

the interesting question: what investments have the potential to deliver most bottom-line value to your business ?

Business value ? the driving force

Some of the IT challenges that today's mid-market companies experience are that the promised return on investment is not delivered, IT does not sufficiently enable the needed responsiveness and the IT solution portfolio is too expensive to maintain and operate. But maybe even more severe is the fact that not enough value is provided to the core business.

When IT is not sufficiently aligned with business strategy and goals, too much focus is on technology ? too little on incremental, manageable change that delivers real value to the business. Last but not least IT is often a delaying factor when change is needed ? some times a crucial delay.

Many executives express that it is time to demand more value from IT investments.

At the same time companies are seeking to make their businesses more secure in a less stable world and gain competitive advantage from a streamlined IT infrastructure. Their conclusion is clear: from now on IT will primarily be measured by its ability to handle the above mentioned challenges and deliver sustained business value.

The Express Value Creation approach is supported by tools and methods with proven ability to accelerate the value assessment process and quickly lead to the identification of hotspot areas for investment or areas where change is highly required.

The holistic scope of Express Value Creation

Until now, many mid-sized businesses have been working at a technological disadvantage. Enterprise software products and solutions may offer the capabilities you need ? but scaling them down, rolling them out and making them work can require significant skills and resources.

The Express Value Creation approach eases the frustration that this may cause. All we have learned from working with mid-sized companies combined with the methods and concepts originally developed for large companies have been combined in our Express Value Creation approach. It is tailored to fit mid-market requirements like affordable projects, rapid return on investment and lowering costs of existing IT solutions.

The Express Value Creation approach provides a holistic view combining many important business and IT facets. It enables focus on exactly those business aspects desired by you. Strategy, process, organization and technology are parameters that you can adjust and that will have an effect on the way you run your business and the value IT brings to it.

We know how to create value

Tight collaboration between your company's business and IT executives, some of your other business managers, and consultants with deep insight in how successful businesses exploit the benefits of IT is a major key to the success of our approach. We know that time is a scarce resource. Hence, we have focused on bringing proven techniques and models into the process. Business executives tell us they appreciate the way the approach is designed.

To you it means :

? rapid value identification and realization.

? focusing on exactly those business aspects desired by you.

? a holistic view combining strategy, process, organization and technology perspectives.

? alignment of business and IT goals.

? making the value creation journey happen in steps ? at your pace.

We encourage you to challenge us. Let us demonstrate how we can help you cope with some of your major issues and together create real business values.

A unique mid-market advisor

For years consultants from IBM Business Consulting Services and from local IBM affiliates have been working with small and mid-sized companies to help them identify what investments would provide most value to their business. Deep industry knowledge and experience with best practices are amongst our key competencies and our consultants bring ground-breaking business modelling frameworks that will help you view your business as a logical set of building blocks.

For more information. To learn more about Express Value Creation, contact Henrik Scheel, Business Unit Executive for Services for Europe, Middle East and Asia in IBM Business Consulting Services for SMB (HSch@ch.ibm.com).