The following is adapted from our eBook, “Aligning just a BIT: How the Marriage of IT and BT produces results” discussing user experience strategy and its importance in today’s Age of the Customer. Get your free copy here. 

A successful enterprise is defined by an unceasing capacity to adapt, innovate and reinvent. Clearly, this is not easy to accomplish.

Consider these research statistics from Gartner:

• 44% of companies polled admit that they are “just marginally effective or average at generating ideas and converting them into commercial opportunities”.
• The report also predicts that just 30% of companies will succeed in undergoing a digital business transformation.

The Age of the Customer

We live in what Forrester Research describes as the Age of the Customer. In short, customers, not companies, call all the shots. They can switch vendors at the drop of a hat and can rely on the power of information through reviews and social media. The result is that we now live in a world of 2-day standard shipping, on-demand services, and endless promotions.

To innovate and grow in an “on-demand economy, an enterprise must obsess over the user experience of each and every customer. This fact appears to be widely understood: Forrester reports that 92% of companies claim customer and user experience strategy as a top priority. Thus, it must be not the what, but rather the how that explains why so many enterprises fail at digital business transformations.

The Role of Business Technology (BT)

A digital business transformation cannot occur without business technology (BT). Unlike foundational technology (hardware, networks, and server-side software, closely associated with IT), business technology concerns applications and dashboards that are utilized to drive business results.

• Fact: 65% of spending on digital experience technology is by marketing, sales, and line-of-business departments.

The recent maturation of the business technology market has helped line-of-business departments develop sophisticated user experience strategies and demonstrate a return on investment. But here lies the problem: optimizing customer experiences via your line of business only accounts for half the picture. A customer’s experience is affected by your entire company, including the IT department.

Want to Innovate? Look towards your IT department

It is the largest line item in the company budget but rarely is the department viewed as a center of business transformation and innovation. Traditionally, the role of IT in customer experience has been in support and infrastructure, with a focus on cost-effectiveness and efficiency.

Now, Innovative businesses are changing this thinking and aligning business technology (BT) with information technology (IT). Alignment works to draw a direct link from your company to your users. In this way, the IT department mantra evolves from “cheaper – faster – more efficient” to “more engagement – more revenue – more value”.

The Benefits

The alignment of BT and IT will enable a company to multilaterally serve the customer and develop great experiences for customers. Strategic business technology investments will have a wider and more pronounced impact. With alignment, datasets will no longer exist in departmentalized silos, but instead be shared and leveraged in a company-wide effort.

The benefits of ROI-driven IT procurement and development are immense, but BIT alignment is an active and complex process – an undertaking that requires leadership and vision to achieve. It can be difficult to know where to start. Our recommendation is, of course, Yottaa’s new whitepaper.