Where IT and the business align, real value is created
If IT and the business operate with conflicting goals and success criteria, the organisation’s pace of innovation will suffer. Unlocking true synergy requires a shared understanding between the two.
Many organisations face political and/or financial decisions—such as mergers and acquisitions—that demand adaptability, including on the digital front.
When the goal is to ensure that IT and digital solutions create the best possible foundation for business development, the coexistence of new systems (for example, as a result of acquisitions), existing legacy systems, and the desire for new solutions can quickly become complex if the right foundation is not in place.
What matters most is that business units understand that IT creates value by leveraging architecture and systems. Conversely, it is essential that IT has an implicit understanding that technology is merely a tool to optimise and drive the business. IT must never be a goal in itself. A classic example of a lack of shared understanding between the business and IT leadership is the phenomenon known as “shadow IT.”
Shadow IT arises when business units invest in SaaS solutions, narrow silos, or private tools such as Dropbox, and when costs for IT services are managed within individual business unit budgets rather than being part of a consolidated IT budget. Studies show that in such cases, organisations often spend up to 40% more on IT than what is reflected in the official IT budget.
The consequences of shadow IT are both serious and far‑reaching:
Lack of proper access control
Fragmented data sources, increasing the risk of incorrect decisions
Lack of compliance (for example, GDPR)
Difficulties in creating cohesion across channels
Shadow IT generally slows down the pace at which an organisation can implement new solutions and features, while also preventing it from using—and reusing—data across channels. There are two key aspects to this problem:
IT does not provide the tools the business needs, prompting the business to procure its own solutions
The business fails to collaborate with IT to fully leverage the tools that have already been invested in
When the business understands IT’s strategy and has insight into the application landscape, it can set better and more precise requirements. When IT, in turn, gains a stronger understanding of business needs, the need for shadow IT disappears.
Once alignment on goals has been established, collaboration must work in practice every single day. If IT and the business have conflicting goals and success metrics, innovation speed will inevitably suffer.
Navigating this landscape requires strong communication skills, business acumen, and strong interpersonal capabilities. The CIO must be able to communicate strategy clearly, listen actively, and provide well‑founded feedback to ensure IT and the business are working towards the same objectives.
The critical role of the CIO
Today, the CIO must act as a partner to line managers and middle management in their efforts to strengthen cost control and CX/UX across markets, customers, and employees.
The business should focus on sales, customer service, communication, value creation, and transactions. IT should engage in dialogue around how best to support the business agenda, which tools to use, and how to do so most efficiently based on the architecture and strategy for combining cloud services and on‑premise solutions defined by IT. In other words: technology‑enabled business development.
In this context, the CIO will be required to make decisions that are not always popular—but are necessary.
In some organisations, employees may resist machines taking over tasks that have long been performed by humans. At the same time, the rapid pace of innovation in cloud‑native applications, infrastructure, DevOps, and cloud services far exceeds what humans alone can manage.
Here, it is crucial that the CIO steps into a leadership role and is willing to implement cloud services and technologies that optimise processes and ways of working. This reduces the tendency towards shadow IT while strengthening the relationship between the business and IT—ultimately increasing the organisation’s innovation speed.
System support for the business
Being able to communicate clearly, understand the vision, work towards shared goals, act as a partner, and maintain a customer‑centric mindset are all fundamental for a CIO if IT and the business are to succeed together. However, the CIO must never lose sight of their core responsibility.
At a minimum, a CIO must be able to explain:
Why IT architecture matters
Why organisations should consolidate systems onto fewer platforms
Why organisations must avoid shadow IT
If the CIO fails to maintain this focus in collaboration with the business, the result will be a chaotic setup where the launch of new digital initiatives is drowned in technical debt and slow releases.
Conversely, when the CIO succeeds in clearly articulating the importance of these principles, the organisation is well on its way to technology‑enabled growth—driven by shared goals, collaboration, and the ability to deliver strong digital solutions.
As a result, the CIO carries significant responsibility at executive level for driving technology‑enabled business development with a focus on innovation speed—without compromising the need for a strategically designed application landscape and a solid architectural foundation.
