Business owners want to talk about business processes. IT wants to talk about technology. This difference in perspective has created a communications gap between IT and line of business owners. Read real-world examples of organizations that have bridged the gap and are reaping the benefits.
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Bridging the Gap between Busines sProcesses and the IT Environment
Mary Nugent, vice president, Software Consulting,BMC Software
Dr. Thomas Struck, consulting manager, Business ProcessManagement, IDS ScheerTable of Contents Executive summary..................................................................................................... 1
The Advantages of Bridge Building........................................................................ 2 Enhance Business Agility ........................................................................................... 2. Improve Business Services ........................................................................................ 2. Improve Support Services .......................................................................................... 2. Reduce Risk ............................................................................................................... 2. Facilitate Regulatory Compliance ............................................................................... 2. Reduce Costs ............................................................................................................. 2.. Working Toward a Common Goal............................................................................ 3 IT Service Management Evolution ............................................................................. 3. Business Process Management Evolution ................................................................. 3. Reaching a Common Meeting Point .......................................................................... 4.
Building the Bridge..................................................................................................... 4 Extending the CMDB ................................................................................................. 4. Extending Autodiscovery Tools ................................................................................... 5. Closing the Gap .......................................................................................................... 5. Beyond IT Business Services ..................................................................................... 5.. Some Examples............................................................................................................. 6 Large European Bank ................................................................................................. 6. Large European Manufacturing Company .................................................................. 6.
Conclusion.................................................................................................................... 7Executive Summary
Today, organizations are striving to align IT more closely with the business to drive greater business performance. But there is an obstacle to that alignment. That obstacle is due to the significant difference in perspective between IT professionals and line of business owners.
IT typically looks at the IT infrastructure from the inside out - seeing it as a complex combination of hardware and software technology assets, such as servers, clients, applications, databases, network devices, and storage devices. Line of business owners, on the other hand, typically look at the IT infrassstructure from the outside in. They see a collection of business services provided by IT to support business processes. They are not interested in the individual technology assets that support the services. For example, a financial services manager sees an online credit card verification service, and is not concerned with the individual IT resources that support the service.
This difference in perspective has created a communications gap between IT and line of business owners. Business owners want to talk about business processes. IT wants to talk about technology resources, and typically may not understand the relationships between these resources and the business processes they support. Bridging this communications gap is essential to aligning IT with the business.
This convergence requires that both parties understand the relationships between business processes and the IT resources that support these services and processes. Such an understanding delivers comsppel... [download for more]
