IT Business Alignment: Bridging the Gap Between Technology and Business Strategy
Companies today have the challenging task of seamlessly integrating technology and business into their operations. Business information technology is integral in business improvement and reaching business goals. Managing business technology, learning how to improve business with new technology, and the technology development process can make or break a company.
But even more important is business technology management.
It’s not always easy to marry the business office technology you deal with every day with general business requirements such as effective communication skills, management skills, and business risk. Leaders today need to understand business technology management, recognize barriers to effective communication when explaining business IT solutions, and possess project management skills.
In this strategic course, not only will you learn about information technology business management, but also how technology in business can assist with business goals and objectives.
Enroll in this course if you are:
- An IT manager or director involved with new enterprise IT initiatives
- An IT professional charged with increasing the effectiveness of existing technologies and processes
- A technologist who would like to hone your business analysis and strategy skills to better collaborate with the other functional groups of the organization
In today’s business climate, everyone understands the need to shorten the time to act on business opportunities or react from industry threats. IT is a critical tool to help support business strategy. Unfortunately, IT investment and implementation isn’t always aligned with the business needs. Participants completing this course will have the tools and knowledge needed to prevent misalignment and achieve measurable business benefit.
You will learn to:
- Demystify IT to executives and stakeholders and show its value to the business model and strategic objectives
- Understand project portfolio analysis and determine the IT initiatives that need the greatest focus and resources
- Be able to better use technology to increase revenues, productivity and efficiency
- Identify tools that help diagnose IT misalignment and learn how to use them to remedy problems
- Maximize asset utilization and extract every dollar from enterprise systems
- Develop people to ask the right questions about IT and business strategy
Topics covered include:
- The state of IT and business strategy
- Causes of good and bad IT alignment
- Maximizing IT human capital
- Using IT in business process improvement: increasing efficiency and decreasing costs
- Using IT in new product or process development: increasing revenues, customer base and productivity
“This course has been invaluable in changing the philosophy of our IT department and the direction of our organization. A year later, our director is so impressed with the results of IT alignment, he’s requiring the rest of the organization to use tools and techniques learned from the course as a model to help align with our organization’s vision and mission.”
Seth Keel, IT Manager, Wisconsin Center for Dairy Research, Madison, WI
The University of Wisconsin–Madison, as a member of the University Continuing Education Association (UCEA), authorizes this course for 1.4 Continuing Education Units (CEUs) or 14 hours.
jcorkery@exed.wisc.edu