Faisal Hoque, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, BTM Corporation, spoke on The Power of Convergence: Why Bringing Business and Technology Together Matters, at the March 2010 Business Ecology Initiative Symposium in Jacksonville FL.
Hoque set the stage with the startling fact that only 74 of the original 500 firms remain in the S&P index just 40 years later. The frenetic pace of business has reduced the enterprise life expectancy. The response has been a call for agility. Referencing research of the BTM Institute, Hoque stated that agility is achieved through repeatable management processes.
The components of agility are flexible organizational constructs and behaviors, standards for enterprise architecture, including business architecture, a portfolio investment approach that is structured to balance between stability and agility, and a governance model that facilitates horizontal and collaborative decision making processes.
Of the flexible organizational constructs and behaviors, Hoque focused on business-technology convergence. Unlike business-IT alignment, which is essentially communicating silos, business-technology convergence features intertwined business and technology activities, dedicated to driving superior financial performance.
With the agility and business-technology convergence context set, Hoque walked through the BTM management practice framework, including the 17 capabilities required to achieve convergence.
In addition to discussing the practices, Hoque shared metrics and trends from the hundreds of organizations who have utilized the BTM measurement tools over the past 7 years. A critical finding is a correlation of management practice maturity and corporate growth and financial returns – stock price, earnings and margins.
Click here to listen to an audio recording of Hoque’s presentation and view the slides.
[Disclosure: The Business Ecology Initiative is a client of my firm, Elemental Links.]