Tarek Hoteit, Banfield Pet Hospital, Senior Director, IT Growth and Enablement
- Technology mistakes often happen when IT doesn’t understand the business and vice versa.
- Future-proofing the business with the right technology investments will help align IT with business priorities over the short and long term.
“Without long-term thinking, whatever you implement now could damage the business’s capabilities for future growth.”
Tarek Hoteit believes that organizations can open themselves to costly technology mistakes if IT and the business don’t communicate with each other effectively. IT leaders can sometimes hire technology specialists who are not particularly business savvy. If the business’s focus isn’t technology, it may not have much internal technology expertise apart from its IT team—a situation that can create challenges when IT and the business need to collaborate. “What you often see is miscommunication or a top-down approach in which the business says, ‘IT needs to do this.’ The business typically has the upper hand here,” Hoteit says, “but without business savvy, the technology team may not fully understand why, resulting in issues down the line.” In contrast, IT may have innovative ideas or solutions that could benefit the business, but the IT team may struggle to communicate its value in terms the business will understand. “Because of the relationship between business and technology, you can end up with a lack of clarity about why something is being done or why something was missed,” Hoteit explains.
This is an excerpt from 9 Experts on How to Align IT’s Work to Company Strategy. The eBook was generously sponsored by Workfront.
