Our Services center on helping to make IT more effective in supporting the achievement of business goals. In thirty years of practice we have learned that management and organizational issues in IT are just as important as technical issues. Thus our practice has worked to develop metrics and tools to help manage the human side of IT.

Assessing IT-Business alignment

Our baseline alignment benchmarking surveys split the enterprise into its separate units, and give results on IT-business alignment by each major type of business goal. These results form the basic material for re-alignment work between IT and business managers within the units. They also give the CIO an overall Alignment score (compared with our database of over 200 organizations) against which to set targets for improvement. This score is business-realistic, in that it measures IS Contribution to business goal achievement, rather than IT-centric performance measures. It also gives management a reading on the business value IT is delivering.

Re-alignment Consulting

Our baseline alignment benchmarking service includes two days of consulting for each unit surveyed. The aim is to develop specific data and train facilitators to run IT-business Planning Interaction (re-alignment) sessions. We also advise on the selection of facilitators and the selection of the first units for the re-alignment exercise.

IT Credibility and Customer Satisfaction

We have learned in our practice that IT's credibility with clients is closely linked to customer satisfaction with IT performance on delivering the basics--independently confirmed by Gartner Group. These surveys give you direct measures of IT's Credibility with business manager clients. And the customer satisfaction data allow drilldowns into specific sources of client dissatisfaction with IT performance. The results are compared with our 200-organization database, and tell the CIO where performance needs to be improved to increase IT credibility with clients. The survey includes about 30 standard questions, plus additions for specific services, such as help desk. (This survey is included in the Baseline Benchmark.)

Work Satisfaction and Engagement

IT staff members' engagement with and knowledge of the business makes them very valuable, so losing them because of dissatisfaction is very costly--more than double the annual salary. This survey was designed specifically for IT staff and management. It helps identify causes of turnover so they can be fixed. It's the only IT staff survey that assesses staff engagement with the business and with the company. Its 30 questions summarize results in five factors. "Satisfiers" inlcude satisfaction with relationships and the technology situation. "Motivators" include satisfaction with compensation, opportunity to work with leading-edge technology, promotion opportunities, personal development and training. "Business Engagement" includes knowing the operating goals of the company and identification with company success. "Company Engagement" deals with caring about the company's future, recommending it to others as a great place to work. These factors predict the probability of turnover, and show where remedial action is indicated to prevent loss.

IT and Business culture assessment.

In our practice we have seen many organizations where there is a clash between the IT and business cultures. This clash can make it difficult for IT and business managers to work together to re-align IT with business goals. Even though cultures don't change overnight, it is important to know what the cultures are and how they may clash. This survey shows which units are most capable of having IT and business managers work together, and what you must guard against in a Planning Interaction effort. It is included in the Baseline Benchmark Assessment.

Survey types and combinations