Abstract
Over the last decades, the role of the IT department within an organization has gradually gained importance. Technology has permeated all areas within organizations and nowadays is the cornerstone of almost all business processes. Thus, business-IT alignment (BITA) is considered an essential success factor for almost any organization. Consequently, the evaluation and improvement of this alignment have been a growing concern among researchers and organizations. This study assessed the BITA maturity in a Colombian university, applying Luftman’s SAM (Strategic Alignment Maturity) model. The conducted assessment collected, analyzed, and contrasted perceptions of business and IT personnel. Similarly, we investigated the personnel’s perceptions at the strategic, functional, and operational levels regarding the SAM factors. Furthermore, we compared our results with other BITA assessments in educational institutions, Latin American organizations, and worldwide results. Finally, we drew some conclusions that can be useful for practitioners who seek to apply Luftman’s assessment.
Highlights
As (Chan & Reich, 2007) highlight, the strategic Business/Information Technology Alignment (BITA) has been a recurring research topic for the past thirty years, mainly due to the strong impact of information technology (IT) investment in hardware/software and its long-term effects on the organizations’ performance
This paper aims to present a practical case analysis, where we assessed the degree of business-IT alignment (BITA) at a Colombian university by applying the Luftman instrument
WORK In this paper, we first presented a brief description, history, and definitions of BITA, the instrument proposed by Luftman, to analyze it
Summary
As (Chan & Reich, 2007) highlight, the strategic Business/Information Technology Alignment (BITA) has been a recurring research topic for the past thirty years, mainly due to the strong impact of information technology (IT) investment in hardware/software and its long-term effects on the organizations’ performance. Alignment should evolve to a state in which both strategies, i.e., business and IT, advance together, requiring management activities aimed at achieving cohesive goals across all the organization units. In the early 90s, (Henderson & Venkatraman, 1993) developed a pivotal model, namely the Strategic Alignment Model (SAM). They conceptualized the domains of strategic alignment and the interrelationships among them, which allowed researchers to formulate modern Business/IT Alignment theories. Researchers have created approaches for measuring alignment and assessing alignment maturity levels within organizations.
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