Upgrading Corporate IT For Enterprise Coordination

Federated IT shops need to increase cross-business-unit coordination to address enterprise projects. Twenty-three of the 25 organizations we recently reviewed stated they were increasing their investment in processes and systems that cross the enterprise. Within these shops, corporate IT, often called Group IS in Europe, provides the glue for cross-business-unit activities. As pressure to exploit the scale of the enterprise increases and technology enables more enterprise class systems, corporate IT must selectively increase its influence and oversight. To do this, corporate CIOs need to understand their source of power for each function they provide. In functions like planning and architecture, this is based on facilitation and being an information provider. In functions such as security and vendor management, power is more direct and top-down.