An integrated model for formulation, alignment, execution and evaluation of business and IT strategies

Abstract

New global markets operation strongly depends on information technologies which radically influence the business strategies of enterprises and organisations. Towards this direction, this paper proposes an effective integrated architectural model and framework for the purpose of formulating, aligning, executing and evaluating in a combined way both business strategy and information technology strategy. In order to achieve this goal, key concepts and respective frameworks, such as the strategic alignment, the balanced scorecard, the strategic architecture, and the business architecture are thoroughly investigated. Then, we progressively integrate all of them in one model in order to eliminate the weaknesses of the previous models and provide the enterprises and the organisations with an innovative, useful and applicable tool. The proposed model can lead to high business performance, agility and consistency in decision making, improved resource control, refinement capability via feedback mechanisms, increased coordination, quality of service, and positive financial results.