A communication chasm between business and technical decision makers can derail projects, profits, and careers. But when business and IT understand each other, together they can provide a competitive advantage. Industry analysts recommend three essential processes to improve communication and collaboration between business and IT professionals:

• Commit to interact in productive ways.
• Jointly develop strategic plans, prioritize projects, and communicate during the implementation process.
• Make sure everyone in the company knows how the collaboration produced business value.

Start Fresh

The communication chasm was carved bit by bit over years as a result of:

• Burgeoning complexity in technology
• Fluid business strategies and objectives
• Uncertain budgets
• Missed deployment deadlines

Wariness exists on both sides. As Michael Dortch, principal business analyst for the Robert Frances Group consulting firm, says, "The situation between business and IT will only get better after the other side admits it was wrong." He's joking, but the sentiment exists. The first step both parties must take is to start with a clean slate and commit to productive communications.

Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) have a significant advantage over large enterprises in this area: "The good news is that in SMBs, there are fewer people involved in the decision making, so communications can be streamlined," says Dortch. The downside is that it can be difficult for the technology and business decision makers to focus their attention and find the time to collaborate because they carry a wider range of job responsibilities than their enterprise peers.

Set up a Roadmap

When it's time to collaborate, how do the business and IT decision makers find common ground? This can be the biggest challenge for SMBs.

In the frenzy of competing with larger rivals and growing the business, SMBs often give short shrift to clarifying their strategies and objectives and defining and following the policies and procedures required to attain them.

"IT too often gets into fixing problems instead of solving problems," says Sanjeev Aggarwal, senior analyst for SMB strategies at the Yankee Group analyst firm. "It needs to move from an ad hoc stance to a proactive mode."

Laurie McCabe, vice president for SMB insights at the analyst firm AMI-Partners, concurs. "There has to be a meeting of the minds. Both parties need to come to the table and map out their objectives," she says. "Then they have to prioritize them, which means listening to each other's realities and constraints." When they decide what's most important, each side has a context in which they can discuss projects they want to embark upon, and each side can see where it fits in the overall strategy.

Once a project begins, regular communication is critical. Expectations must be clear, and responsibility shared. "Operating in a vacuum doesn't work," says McCabe. "No matter which side you're on, you'll eventually get to a hurdle where you need input from the other side. That's why it's important to get the dialogue going early."

Sing Praises

After a technology deployment, to let the whole company know what went well. "IT talks about running the department like a business, but have you ever heard of a business that didn't have any marketing?" asks Laurie Orlov, vice president of the IT management team for Forrester Research.

in 2005, Forrester surveyed 303 business users of IT at companies of varying sizes, and found that only one-third were satisfied with communications from IT about what it was working on. The rest were dissatisfied or indifferent.

"Too often, IT is a mysterious function," explains Orlov. People may know when the IT team is working on a project for their specific department, she adds, but rarely do they know what's going on elsewhere in the company. "That lack of transparency doesn't speak positively about IT," says Orlov. It's important that business and IT leaders alike explain just what it is that IT does for the company. That explanation will give everyone common ground from which to continue productive communications.

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About the Author

Based in Silicon Valley, freelancer Howard Baldwin understands English, some Spanish, and a little German. Some parts of technology are still Greek to him.

iQ Magazine, Fourth Quarter 2005