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IT leaders have long struggled to deliver business and technology alignment. But alignment implies a waterfall process: Decide on a business strategy, and then build your technology on that foundation. Today, our businesses move too fast for the traditional IT model; instead, business technology (BT) leaders must partner with their business colleagues to create business and technology strategy simultaneously. That means working with new business partners inside and outside your organization, operationalizing innovation, and, above all, saying, “Yes, and . . .” instead of “Yes, but . . .”.

This year, we’ll dedicate IT Forum to building bridges to new business partners, scaling innovative solutions, and co-creating business and technology strategy. We’ll help each of the roles we serve move beyond business and technology alignment by mastering three interrelated disciplines:

• Develop your empowered BT organization. Business units and empowered employees that can provision their own technology will neither need nor value what today’s IT is good at — and will solve their problems without IT if it can’t add value. For IT to regain relevance, it must reinvent itself as an organization that moves beyond its legacy burdens and helps the business take charge of the new IT capabilities available in the market. This model emphasizes new-generation technology visioning, consultation, and the sustainability of fresh technology implementations in the enterprise that enable new business objectives.
• Unleash technology-based innovation. The rising wave of social technologies and a new workforce familiar with collective action are emerging as tools to push innovation as a key potential driver of a new way to work. Potential benefits can hit the top line in the form of launching new products to market or the bottom line in the form of a more efficient organization that can drive down costs and drive up productivity. Now is the time to investigate how this trend can benefit your organization.
• Drive business and technology process flexibility. Today’s flood of customer-driven and co-created innovation requires flexible processes that allow for continual refinement and transformation. Conventional wisdom says that smart business process management and business architecture strategies will deliver. But it can’t all be about flexibility. Counter-intuitively, ruthless standardization of technology and service delivery infrastructure can often make it easier to meet the accelerating demands for business change. Striking the right balance of standardization and flexibility will make or break IT’s relevance in the years to come.

Each of these efforts represents both a challenge and an immense opportunity. Addressing them collectively rather than independently will make your BT organization relevant and valuable for years to come.

Who Should Attend?

ACTIONABLE ADVICE — TAILORED TO YOUR ROLE

IT Forum is Forrester’s annual flagship event designed to help IT professionals tackle shared matters like the interrelated efforts we just introduced. As always, we will address these through the eyes of each of the 10 roles the Event serves:

• Application Development & Delivery Professionals.
• Business Process Professionals.
• CIOs.
• Content & Collaboration Professionals.
• Enterprise Architecture Professionals.
• Infrastructure & Operations Professionals.
• Security & Risk Professionals.
• Sourcing & Vendor Management Professionals.
• Technology Marketing Professionals.
• Vendor Strategy Professionals.

Interested in attending? Download a letter to request approval from your manager. [Word document]

Why Attend?

BRING YOUR TEAM

Past attendees have benefited most by bringing a team of people from their company or organization, with each attendee representing a different role or discipline in the IT organization. We would be happy to work with your organization to chart a custom, team-based course through IT Forum’s three days.

OTHER BENEFITS OF ATTENDING

• One-On-One Meetings with any of more than 100 Forrester analysts.
• Compelling keynotes from leading executives on the topic of IT’s value to the enterprise.
• Case studies showcasing success stories and lessons learned.
• Peer-networking opportunities with more than 1,000 attendees.

THE FORRESTER EVENT DIFFERENCE

• The quality of the Forrester keynotes. Presentations are backed by thousands of interviews with technology leaders, business executives, and vendors, coupled with data from Forrsights for Business Technology and Consumer Technographics®.
• Exclusive audiences. Forrester Forum attendees include executives from the highest organizational levels.
• Integration of organizational, technological, and business issues. Forrester Forums provide a comprehensive understanding of the challenges ahead and how your company can overcome them.