Why aligning business and IT value is vital for digital transformation

Digital transformation is in many cases easier said than done. A recent study found three-quarters of UK public sector organisations are yet to fully implement their digital transformation strategies.

Good advice can be hard to find, from technological to cultural adoption – the what, the who, and the when. Yet low-code platform provider Mendix has extensive experience in delivering business-transforming enterprise software, and a framework that puts organisations on the right path.

There are many benefits of low-code development, from reduced operational costs to improved time to market. In its its Digital Execution Manual, Mendix states the scalability of low-code is key; getting more-strategically aligned applications to market more quickly and accurately. The company’s most successful customers have built hundreds of applications on the Mendix platform.

At the heart of getting things right are five P’s. Find the right people and put them in the right environment; embrace a new process of rapidly delivering software; effectively manage a software portfolio; select a platform that scales with you and helps you embrace technologies like generative AI. And, perhaps the most overlooked, promotion.

Promotion is important because sharing your successes – for example, proactive internal and external marketing around the ‘company of the future’ – helps align understanding around IT and business strategies.

Bram Voogel, digital execution practice lead EMEA at Mendix, outlines the different promotional steps. “How do you promote that vision inside the company? How do you get more use cases? How do you create a community, a centre of excellence in your company to execute the technology at hand?”

“We see this in the scans we do with our customers, that promotion part of things [is] overlooked, and we need to pay attention to that, whether it’s capturing more value, promoting that value, or creating that vision and sharing that vision in the broader organisation. Those are very important steps.” Voogel says.

Getting the combined understanding between business and IT value is key to a project’s success: from process improvement to new revenue streams for the former, from development savings to increased velocity for the latter.

“If you talk about low-code platforms, it’s important [with] business and IT collaboration you get that [combined understanding] right,” says Voogel. “You want to create outcomes for the business […] So, we start usually with that when we do a value assessment, but don’t forget the IT value.

“[Business and IT] also interact with each other,” he says. “An increased velocity could lead to faster business value implementation, because you can create the use cases faster, implement them faster, and bring them to production faster because of that.

“We try to explain to the customers that both sides are important, and then you make it really clear that ‘okay, this is the IT value, this is the business value, and this is how they interact with each other’.”

Bram Voogel is speaking at the TechEx Amsterdam Digital Transformation Expo event. Digital execution practice and framework is an ethos embraced by Mendix – and it can be seen in the company’s recently revamped Compass tool. Compass helps with strategic alignment, mapping out multiple years for what a customer wants to achieve with low-code, but can help in the short-term with portfolio and value tracking, supporting customers in day-to-day digital execution.

“Creating a digital execution plan is really key for Compass,” says Voogel. “Our CSMs [customer success managers] then can easily support our customers in guiding and helping them up that mountain they need to climb.”

Bram Voogel is speaking at Digital Transformation Expo Europe, in Amsterdam on September 24-25. Find out more about the event and register your place here.

Want to learn more about Cloud Computing from industry leaders? Check out Cyber Security & Cloud Expo taking place in Amsterdam, California, and London. The comprehensive event is part of TechEx and co-located with other leading technology events. Click here for more information.

CloudTech News is powered by TechForge Media. Explore other upcoming enterprise technology events and webinars here.