Paper Title
HARMONIZING IT AND BUSINESS GOALS: A BLUEPRINT FOR COMPANIES

Abstract
The latest findings from the Society of Information Management (SIM) highlight the growing importance of IT-business alignment as a critical driver for organizational performance and adaptability. IT-business alignment continues to be a top priority for CIOs and IT executives, as reported in the 2023 IT Trends Study by SIM. Moreover, SIM's study reveals that IT alignment with business goals complements other top concerns such as cybersecurity and data privacy, positioning IT departments not only as technical support but as strategic enablers of core business functions. This shift aligns IT goals closely with business outcomes, contributing to improved financial performance and organizational resilience. This articleexplores the concept of IT-business alignment, highlighting its importance, and strategies for achieving IT-business alignment. As digital transformation accelerates, companies are investing in emerging technologies like AI, data analytics, and cloud computing, emphasizing the importance of alignment between IT and business goals. Society of Information Management (SIM) recent survey indicates that Cybersecurity remains a top concern for organizations, and IT-business alignment is vital in ensuring data protection and privacy (Fig 1). In 2022, cybersecurity, IT alignment and Data analytics represents the top 3 pressing IT management concerns for organizations. Fig 1 Recent data (Table above) from the Society of Information management shows that IT and Business alignment continues to be ranked among the top 2 list of most important IT management issues since 2013 Results from the previous research by Luftman and Kempaiah shows that alignment maturityis dynamic and continually evolving, there are reasons why alignment still even today continues to be an important issue globally. Achieving alignment requires business professionals to have sufficient knowledge of IT solutions being implemented and IT professionals to have sufficient business knowledge of their core operations in their organization. IT-business alignment is no longer a luxury but a necessity for companies aiming for sustainable success. By aligning IT initiatives with business goals, companies can drive innovation, optimize costs, and ensure resilience in an ever-changing marketplace. Although many research on IT -business alignment have shown that that alignment maturity is improving, there are reasons why alignment continues to be an important issue - as will be discussed in this article. Luftman introduced the Strategic Alignment Maturity Model (SAMM) as a tool to evaluate the alignment between IT and business strategies. The SAMM consists of four dimensions: Business Strategy, IT Strategy, Organizational Infrastructure, and IT infrastructure. The SAMMemphasize the importance of skills and organizational culture, especially in terms of cross-functional training and shared leadership responsibilities between IT and business teams. This alignment encourages companies to invest in skill development, agility, and digital adaptability as key enablers for long-term business success and IT synergy. This article will leverage the concepts of Luftman’s SAMM in analyzing the current state of IT-business alignment. Organizations need to address SAM components (e.g., communications, partnerships, IT metrics, governance, human resources, and technology scope) in identifying the degree of alignment. Survey developed by Luftman was used to collect the data from both IT and business professionals over the past 12 months. The breakdown of the data is as follows: Healthcare organizations – 8, IT Service companies – 6, and manufacturing companies – 11. Totally we received 182 responses. Elements from all the six components from were analyzed and responses were also benchmarked against Luftman’s global data from 321 Fortune 1,000 companies. Analyzing the responses has provided interesting insights about the alignment maturity from these companies. Over the years, we have found that there is no single solution to this alignment problem. In reality, companies need to address all the six maturity components. Keywords – Alignment of IT-Business, Business-IT Alignment, IT-Business Alignment.