"The companies that will get ahead and stay ahead in today's interconnected business environment will be those that take control of technology, not those that let technology take control of them. Business leaders who want grab the reins and steer IT in the same direction as the rest of the business must read this book." ！Charles B. Wang,
Founder and Chairman of the Board,
Computer Associates International, Inc. "I found this book an enlightening and valuable read. The real world stories coupled with the author's interpretation of the CIO's business role, should make every business leader sit up and take notice. Everyone in a position of leadership should read this book before they set next year's IT budget." ！Phil Fasano,
Senior Vice President,
Global Technology Group,
JP Morgan Chase and Company "The Alignment Effect paints a vivid picture of information technology's worst-kept secret: IT cannot, by itself, solve your business problem. To solve your problem, any new technology must be carefully aligned with your business objectives and processes. Otherwise, save your money. Read this book if you want to ensure the success of your own technology implementation!" ！Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, Ph.D.,
authors of the One to One series of books on managing individual customer relationships "Faisal Hoque demonstrates that technology is no longer just the realm of engineers and programmers. The Alignment Effect challenges 'C' level executives to drive IT value and provides them the pathway to smart, integrated business decisions." ！Randolph C. Blazer,
Chairman & CEO,
KPMG Consulting, Inc. "The strength and appeal of The Alignment Effect is that it provides a flexible but actionable approach that, if interpreted and applied well, can greatly increase the probability that alignment will！over time！occur." ！Bob Zmud,
prolific author,
Research Director for the Advanced Practices Council of the Society for Information Management,
and Professor and Michael F. Price Chair in MIS,
Michael F. Price College of Business,
University of Oklahoma "The examples of business/technology alignment and misalignment speak to every reader. Rarely have horror stories been explained so clearly, and Hoque shows how to ensure alignment so that next year's horror stories don't involve your company." ！Don Tapscott,
International best-selling author and Co-Founder of Digital 4Sight "Faisal Hoque's assertion that capturing the value of IT requires synchronizing business, process, and technology issues is right on. My own sense in my field of research is that many companies need to do exactly what the author describes as important." ！V. Sambamurthy,
widely recognized researcher on business-IT alignment
and Eli Broad Professor of Information Technology,
Eli Broad College of Business,
Michigan State University "Top executives have realized for years that closing the gaping distance between technology and business can provide their organization with a strong, defensible, competitive advantage. However, knowing it and executing it are very different. The Alignment Effect finally clearly lays out a process of how to do it, and do it right." ！Chuck Martin,
Author, Managing for the Short Term "It occasionally happens that the producer of an innovative technology reaps rewards even if the customer fails to realize the promised benefit. It never happens that the customer reaps rewards under such circumstances. If you want to avoid being that customer, get to know BTM as defined in The Alignment Effect." ！Isaac Applbaum,
Partner, Lightspeed Venture Partners
From CIO Insight"In this soon-to-be-released guide to alignment strategy, the experiences of industry experts and Fortune 500 executives provide object lessons on the pitfalls of "technology for the sake of technology," while the author lays out the benefits of what he calls Business Technology Management (BTM) to help corporate decision-makers reduce risk and increase efficiency." ！Copyright 2002 Ziff Davis Media Inc.
The cataclysmic end of the new economy signaled not only a stock market implosion but also a dramatic denouement in what was actually a decade-long history of "technology for the sake of technology." In retrospect, the revelation and return to rational thinking seem self-evident: how many executives, after all, would willingly throw millions of dollars at an investment without knowing how it could affect business? If we use history as a guide and tally up the waste, the answer is an unpalatable "a lot."
Now corporations are demanding the same accountability from their IT investments that they do from their other assets, as they hold technology initiatives to real, bottom-line business results. As any decision-maker charged with overseeing how technology affects the business and vice versa knows, get it right, and you're lionized as a savior; get it wrong, and you're cast out as a pariah.
In The Alignment Effect, Faisal Hoque combines proven guidance with object lessons from Fortune 500 executives and industry authorities to compellingly illustrate how corporations can align themselves through Business Technology Management, thereby increasing their efficiency and reducing the financial and operational risks that have long been associated with business and technology change. "After billions upon billions of dollars and more than a decade, experience shows that failing to bring technology projects in line with business goals can have devastating consequences. Neither business vision alone nor technology alone is to blame. At the heart of this dilemma exists a costly and persistent disconnect that, regardless of industry, has vexed business and IT decision-makers alike. But, after all this time, how can companies right what is so obviously wrong?" ！Faisal Hoque
With insights contributed by key industry executives and thought leaders from around the globe: Randolph C. Blazer Chairman & CEO, KPMG Consulting, Inc. Paul Daversa President & CEO, Resource Systems Group Patrick F. Flynn VP & CIO, PACCAR, Inc. Scott Hayward Managing Director, JPMorgan Chase and Company Dale Kutnick Chairman, CEO, & Research Director, META Group, Inc. Dr. Jerry Luftman Best-selling author of Competing in the Information Age; Distinguished Service Professor, Stevens Institute of Technology Chuck Martin Best-selling author of Managing for the Short Term and Net Future; Former Associate Publisher, InformationWeek Jack Mollen SVP, Human Resources, EMC Corporation Honorio Padron President & CEO, Business Services, Exelon Corporation Don Peppers Best-selling author of the One to One book series; Founder & Partner, Peppers and Rogers Group Chris Perretta CIO, GE Capital, Card Services Kevin Poulter Head of Business Integration, British American Tobacco Howard Smith CTO, CSC Europe Thomas Trainer Former CIO, Citigroup, Inc., Eli Lilly & Co., and Reebok International Ltd. Carl Wilson EVP & CIO, Marriott International, Inc.
About the Author
Faisal Hoque is Chairman and CEO of enamics, Inc., the industry's first provider of a unified software platform for Business Technology Management (BTM). A globally recognized thought leader, innovator, and expert on the complex business technology needs of the Fortune 500, Mr. Hoque developed one of the earliest Net commerce platforms for General Electric (GE) and holds several patents. Hoque is a sought after speaker and author of the internationally acclaimed e-Enterprise. 5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:MIS Ills explored, February 13, 2004
Reviewer: (Houston, TX) - See all my reviewsHoque gives great information on what troubles IT today. The Alignment Effect is quite fun to read. I think he gave me a sense of the IT situation in most corporations, beyond the few places I've been in my career.
If I'd gained a sense of how to fix things, I'd give the book 3 or 4 stars. Unfortunately, I didn't get any sense of how to change things. The lack of suggestions to drive change is a shortcoming and left me empty and feeling partly like I wasted my time.
7 of 10 people found the following review helpful:Quick Read, January 14, 2004
Reviewer: A reader
A quick pass through this book gives you a sense of issues for IT departments. Credibility is down, budgets squeezed, half finished projects. IT is in the dumps these days.
I get the feeling Faisal Hoque thinks IT departments area stupd. They should be closely monitored by business leaders at all times. I agree.
The book gives you a good sense of issues. It falls short on presenting solutions.
15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:Prof Roger Ellenhurst, December 12, 2003
Reviewer: (San Francisco, CA) - 'The Alignment Effect' is a review of issues related to the "business technology disconnect."
The highly anecdotal chapters are nicely written and include cameo references from a variety of credible people. Unfortunately, the result is an informal hodgepodge of IT assessments and claims that lead to uncharted waters, which would likely lead to results more pernicious than the problem.
There are many books that integrate portfolio management, project management, and IT planning with a dose of knowledge management and collaboration that help accomplish the claimed results without entering the over-simplified world that this book presents.
My comments on each major section:
Section 1 -- A wordy regurgitation of the fact that IT doesn't always get everything right the first time. This is clearly an attempt to build credibility, but fails to me, since this problem has been well known since the 70s.
Section 2 -- A totally informal section, purporting to be "principles," yet failing to deliver any real framework for understanding or action. It doesn't even clarify or regurgitate, I'm not sure where this stuff comes from. I don't sense any deep understanding of IT or its issues. It reads well, but says nothing useful.
Section 3 -- This tries to turn the essence of section 2, whatever that could be, into action, apparently to make the book a practical guide. It tries to give an enlightened holistic sounding end-to-end view, and fails, leaving only something more like the cuttings from Pulp Fiction or Memento. The coverage of business models is more like how to organize a simple table of contents and document your business model. The real point is business model documentation, not definition. The book shows know understanding of a "business model" in any sense from marketing through finance. The discussion of process optimization is thin and useless, hundreds of books are available that cover process design and implementation quite well -- skip this section. The conversion of all this into "automation" goes into a toddler-like realm of simplicity, and not in the positive senses that might connote.
Section 4 -- On to Governance, another hot buzzword. Loosely speaking, this section tries to build on the earlier sections to talk to modern governance issues. This is the dangerous section. There is nothing to base this section on, the book isn't a new framework or idea, not even a good regurgitation of present knowledge. The governance section does elucidate goals of governance reasonably, but suggests a governance approach that will be as unresponsive to real technology issues as the absolute worst of IT departments might be to business issues. At best, this section would help swing the pendulum the other way, though it would more likely just cut it off.
Sadly, the book has good style, presentation, and writing, but lacks useful or coherent content. The few reasonable ideas that appear are endlessly repeated, suggesting the author doesn't believe the reader gets it the first five times. More likely, the author has nothing else to say.
The book is timely, but misses the mark. There are many solid books in this arena that are based in workable practices, yet remain high accessible to a broad audience. This book seems highly rushed to me, like the author had an idea and the book came out 30 days later. Somehow the style is good, but the content lacks research or forethought.
14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:Strong opinions; risky and unproven approach, October 30, 2003
Reviewer:
6 of 21 people found the following review helpful:A Recommended Read for the Executive, June 19, 2003
Reviewer: James Drogan (Westport, CT USA) - See all my reviewsWell into the information age, the issue of the failure of information technology to deliver on its promise of real business value continues to trouble us. That Hoque feels compelled to bring this matter to our attention is an indictment of our commitment to sensible information technology management. The world's willingness to increasingly buy, yet not effectively improve the management of, information technology has amazed me for the 38 years I have been in the business. I somehow think I will continue to be amazed.
Hoque prescribes an approach to dealing with this issue that is understandable and can be put into action. Simply said, it is about understanding how a business works, how it can be configured to work better, how technology can enable this reconfiguration, and how the resulting benefits can be expressed in business terms.
Do not look in this book for a magic answer to resolve the issue. Indeed, there is no magic answer to be found anywhere. Attendance to the empirical facts of business and technology, and clear reasoning about them is the only way forward. Hoque provides useful guidelines for doing just this.
Some aspects of the book get in the way of clearly understanding Hoque's message. I think the metaphor of building a house has been overused with regard to enterprise architecture, and the illustrations associated with the Rauha Communications case are a trifle abstract.
Hoque's approach to Business Technology Management leads to the development of a considerable amount of useful information. One wishes that Hoque had dealt more clearly with how all of this is to be managed.
The final point is that cultural change is the paramount nemesis of Business Technology Management. We could benefit more from Hoque's experiences in overcoming this barrier to progress. See all 14 customer reviews... Listmania!
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