EVALUATION OF BUSINESS AND IT STRATEGIC ALIGNMENT MATURITY IN RUSSIAN COMPANIES

2016, vol. 16, no. 4, pp. 162–167 162 Introduction Nowadays much attention is being given to the role of information technology (IT) within the enterprise from the point of view of relationship between IT and company's Business. “Unhealthy” relationship between Business and IT may lead the company to some serious problems which can be [1–2]:  Company losses its competitive advantage; corporate image, goodwill and reputation;  IT-projects fail to meet their financial, time, resource and other restrictions;  negative influence of IT-department low quality of work on corporate efficiency and main business processes;  permanent failures of corporate IT initiatives and projects. One of the reasons why mentioned situations occur can be a lack of cohesion between IT and Business within one company. On one hand, among global corporate goals pursued by its top-management are sustainable revenue increase and enterprise value growth as well as high performance of every department with minimum possible costs. On the other hand, chief information officers are interested in maximum budgeting for IT-department’s needs such as renovation of hardand software, implementation of new information technologies; sometimes IT needs may hardly correspond with strategic business goals of the company. In late 1990s a key term of this research was introduced by two researchers – Henderson and Venkatraman. It is Business and IT strategic alignment, which can be identified as beneficial coexistence of Business and IT within one company [3]. Usually the process of strategic alignment includes optimization of the interaction between the IT department and the rest of the company, the construction of clear IT infrastructure as well as procedures for IT projects budgeting and more. The absence of strategic alignment may lead to discordance within the enterprise. During more than twenty years of existence of this idea a separate class of strategic alignment models was formed. These models describe how it is possible to improve the interaction between Business and IT; but none of them evaluates the current state of the company in terms of strategic alignment. Usually the current state can be more important for the launch of some changes and reconstructions. Therefore, it is tend to be vitally important to assess the condition of Business and IT cooperation and thus, define what the level of maturity of strategic alignment is.


Introduction
Nowadays much attention is being given to the role of information technology (IT) within the enterprise from the point of view of relationship between IT and company's Business. "Unhealthy" relationship between Business and IT may lead the company to some serious problems which can be [1][2]:  Company losses its competitive advantage; corporate image, goodwill and reputation;  IT-projects fail to meet their financial, time, resource and other restrictions;  negative influence of IT-department low quality of work on corporate efficiency and main business processes;  permanent failures of corporate IT initiatives and projects. One of the reasons why mentioned situations occur can be a lack of cohesion between IT and Business within one company. On one hand, among global corporate goals pursued by its top-management are sustainable revenue increase and enterprise value growth as well as high performance of every department with minimum possible costs. On the other hand, chief information officers are interested in maximum budgeting for IT-department's needs such as renovation of hard-and software, implementation of new information technologies; sometimes IT needs may hardly correspond with strategic business goals of the company.
In late 1990s a key term of this research was introduced by two researchers -Henderson and Venkatraman. It is Business and IT strategic alignment, which can be identified as beneficial coexistence of Business and IT within one company [3]. Usually the process of strategic alignment includes optimization of the interaction between the IT department and the rest of the company, the construction of clear IT infrastructure as well as procedures for IT projects budgeting and more. The absence of strategic alignment may lead to discordance within the enterprise.
During more than twenty years of existence of this idea a separate class of strategic alignment models was formed. These models describe how it is possible to improve the interaction between Business and IT; but none of them evaluates the current state of the company in terms of strategic alignment. Usually the current state can be more important for the launch of some changes and reconstructions. Therefore, it is tend to be vitally important to assess the condition of Business and IT cooperation and thus, define what the level of maturity of strategic alignment is.

Background analysis: Business and IT strategic alignment maturity evaluation approaches
In the USA and some European countries there is a class of models for evaluation of Business and IT strategic alignment, for example, Duffy model (2001) (2003) and others. These models are widely used for assessing the current situation in company in terms of Business and IT cooperation. Using these models it is possible to understand what are strengths and weak points of the company and what is the next step dination.
During the first phase of this project the following steps and tasks have been accomplished [4  Background research on the approaches to Business and IT strategic alignment evaluation in the USA, Europe and Russia;  Selection of Business and IT strategic alignment maturity models for further research:  Forming a list of evaluation criteria for chosen models:  Comparison analysis of chosen models. As a result, Luftman model [6] tended to be of the big the ways how different departments as well as their executives should cooperate with each other; these relations are considered as a base for strategic alignment. After the model introduces 6 groups of criteri with 6-7 items in each group and questionnaire with points about each criteria as a tool to evaluate coope ration between Business and IT within a company. According to Luftman model IT and Business strategic alignment stands upon 12 components of organization presented on Fig. 1.   03) and others. These models are widely used for assessing the current situation in company in terms of Business and IT cooperation. Using these models it is possible to understand what are strengths and weak points of the company and what is the next step toward the improvement of Business and IT coo During the first phase of this project the following steps and tasks have been accomplished [4 Background research on the approaches to Business and IT strategic alignment evaluation in Selection of Business and IT strategic alignment maturity models for further research: Forming a list of evaluation criteria for chosen models: Comparison analysis of chosen models. As a result, Luftman model [6] tended to be of the biggest interest. At first, this model describes the ways how different departments as well as their executives should cooperate with each other; these relations are considered as a base for strategic alignment. After the model introduces 6 groups of criteri 7 items in each group and questionnaire with points about each criteria as a tool to evaluate coope ration between Business and IT within a company. According to Luftman model IT and Business strategic alignment stands upon 12 components of

Adapted Luftman model implementation results
After adaption of Luftman model for Russian companies and its usage in a form of interviews and surveys several important insights can be made for each respondent-company. Short description of respondents is presented in Table 1. Specializes in the development and implementation of high-tech internet solutions. One of the priorities is to provide services for the organization and maintenance of electronic document management systems, protected by means of encryption and electronic signature 7 CROC System analyst Leader of the Russian IT-market for system integration services, as well as in the IT services for companies in financial sector, it takes the 5th place in the list of the largest consulting firms 8 Intell Group CEO The company was founded in 1994. Main activities are: provision of services in the field of business management consulting services, financial analysis, and households, development and implementation of automated decision support systems 9 GlowByte Consulting Analyst The company was formed in 1998 as an IT outsourcer; in 2004 company began doing IT consulting. Nowadays the company has three offices -in Moscow, Minsk and Kiev. Pursuing both support existing solutions (corporate IS, BIsystems, data warehouses etc.) as well as development from the ground up, the company has gained an excellent reputation among its customers While surveying respondents answered a set of questions in a form of choosing one statement most suitable for a company he/she worked for. Conclusive results are given in the Table 2.
On the data gathered through the survey it can be conclude that the level of maturity of the strategic alignment of Business and IT is largely determined by the industry of the company. This process tends to be more advanced and mature in enterprises whose activities are related to information technologies, for example, the company TOPS Consulting, Company N, GlowByte Consulting. Vice versa is the situation for companies hardly related to information technologies, such as UV-service which demonstrated low levels of strategic alignment. However, this trend is not necessarily typical for all Russian companies when it comes to the largest players of a certain industry as retail, banking, manufacturing, and others, of course, the top companies cannot ignore information technology or treat them only as a supporting component.
Finally, the most valuable knowledge what can be excluded with the help of an adapted model is some recommendations for further improvement of the current situation with respect to the strategic alignment of business and IT in each organization.
For example, CROC's level of strategic alignment in all criteria except the first one (Communication) are very close to the level 4 (3+). It would be reasonable to improve the situation for the poor performance criterion firstly. Some changes seem essential for the way how business is understood by IT and vice versa. Another example, Glowbyte Cons. whose level of strategic alignment maturity is 4+, at first should improve two criteria. Metrics used in organization touches upon both IT and Business but are not considered while strategic planning and KPI forming, it is only used for monitoring operational activities. IT governance improvement can be done through implementation of time-tested and well recommended standards, principles and best practice of organizing IT department work such as ITIL, COBIT etc.

Conclusion
Results of this research can be potentially of big practical interest as they will allow to analyze the common level of strategic alignment on Russian market, compare it with European and American companies, track some tendencies in different sectors, for example, banking, IT consulting, telecommunications, retail etc. Moreover, using this adapted approach each company can understand the current state of how Business and IT cooperate, what are strengths and weaknesses of this partnership and how to improve them step by step.