“The need for IT people to understand business strategy has been beaten to death; today’s imperative is for business people to understand the implications of technology for their business.”

That was Jacob Varghese writing four years ago in the Journal of Business Strategy, in an article titled “ROI is not a formula – It is a responsibility."

How things have changed. Not! It’s true we’ve made tremendous strides toward IT-business alignment. CIOs at organizations of all sizes will tell you it’s among their top five goals. But they’ll also tell you that CIOs and business executives often have conflicting agendas.

Misalignment the rule
We did some research for a major vendor recently that looked at the CFO-CIO relationships worldwide. Among the discoveries: Misalignment among IT, operations, and finance is found everywhere. Over one-quarter of the respondents said “discord” frequently reigned between IT, business and finance when making IT investments. And roughly one-quarter of all respondents report that their companies’ IT, business management, and finance teams disagree often when prioritizing investments.

Who’s responsible here?
The one thing they often agree on, however, is that the CIO holds the responsibility for ROI of any IT investment. Not fair, and not productive, says IBM’s Deb Davis in this week’s POV.

Deb’s argument – that ROI responsibility needs to be shared - is supported by authors Jeanne W. Ross and Cynthia M. Beath. In “New Approaches to IT Investment,” they drew up a blueprint for how to divvy up ROI:

• CEO - Responsible for Transformational IT Investments\
• CIO - Responsible for Renewal IT Investments 
• Business Unit Head / Functional -- Responsible for Process Improvement IT Investments
• R&D - Responsible for Experimental IT Investments

Dangerous disconnect
Here’s the problem: In one survey from late 2007, more than 80 percent of survey respondents indicated IT is a strategic asset for their business but only 33 percent of the respondents said their CIO and/or other senior IT executives were significantly involved. How can such a gap exist despite all the attention paid to IT and business alignment over the past few years?

We’d love to hear your take on this seemingly never-ending challenge.