Published Research

This extensive series of BTM Institute research demonstrates the need for a seamless, structured management approach that begins with the board and CEO and connects all the way through technology investment and implementation. It shows how an organization can be configured to make innovation repeatable. The secret is that innovation must be managed as any other business activity. 'Sustained Innovation' research series shows how to create an infrastructure for the innovation process.

Defines the characteristics of operationally focused enterprises and how they drive superior financial performance. Operational Excellence requires business-technology convergence -- the art and science of managing business and technology as one. Operational Excellence provides managers with a sustainable advantage by giving them the ability to continuously improve their organizations.

This research output defines the characteristics of Innovation-Focused Enterprises and How They Drive Superior Financial Performance by Converging Business and Technology Management. Sustained innovation requires a seamless, structured management approach that begins with board and CEO-level issues and connects all the way through technology investment and implementation.

This research paper defines the characteristics of an Agile Enterprise and how they drive superior Financial Performance. Agile organizations possess the processes and structures – or what we at BTM call “intangible assets" – that gives them situational awareness into the things happening inside and outside the organizations.

The initial Business Technology Convergence Index study conducted in 2006 showed that Business Technology Management maturity at the alignment level correlated with superior economic performance. This update, The Business Technology Convergence Index II, which incorporates data from one of the worst economic downturns in our history.

This BTM Institute research report introduces an index that highlights the connection between corporate financial performance and business technology convergence. It defines the role of business and technology convergence in innovation and adaptability and its effect on financial performance.

Previous BTM Institute research showed that companies that had converged their management of business and technology realized higher profits and faster growth than their competitors. It further showed that these companies were agile. This paper builds on that research to examine the attributes of agility and how successful companies employ technology to achieve it. Agile companies create the processes and structures that allow them to know what is going on internally and externally.

This paper focus on how a real business architecture can reveal an optimum customer strategy. How a real business architecture can reveal an optimum customer strategy. Creating more value for your customer, and generating more value from your customer, is the responsibility of the entire organization, not just the customer-touching units such as sales.

This paper makes the case that a management framework is necessary to achieve this: one that prescribes the necessary organizational structures, decision-making processes and information at every level, from the board to the project team. Surviving by innovating, becoming more efficient and abandoning what is not working is the path to sustainable transformation.

In converged companies, business-unit and technology leaders operate almost interchangeably: every manager is accountable for some business-related aspect of technology—whether it’s product design, operations, or customer service. Next generation leaders have mastered the skills needed to articulate their business objectives and then use technology to achieve those objectives.

Companies with a mature strategic enterprise architecture have documented, fully integrated business and technology architectures that describe the organization and represent the business technology necessary to reach its goals. Standards are enforced intelligently, with reasonable exception processes in place.

This research output highlights how Strategic Investment Management capabilities need to apply the disciplines of asset portfolio management to business technology and other productive assets. It translates strategy into action by subjecting all initiatives to a consistent framework for approval and prioritization, requiring each to show why it is a superior investment in the mix of possibilities.

The frenetic pace of business today has reduced the life expectancy of corporations and the tenure of CEOs. The response has been a call for agility, the ability to move quickly to take advantage of change. But definitions of agility vary, and implementing it is difficult. This research shows that companies that had converged their management of business and technology realized higher profits and faster growth than their competitors.

It goes without saying that bringing the business and technology sides of an organization together will require different ways of organizing and governing. This research output shows that new organizational structures – committees, working groups, and positions – must be established at every level of the organization, from the CxO suite to the project team.