In the process of digitalization construction, CIO or IT managers often face the soul torture: digitalization construction should be led by the IT department or the business department?

Early IT systems are generally demanded by the business sector, the IT department to provide technical services for the construction, but in the end we find that the information silos, and business needs are not met. Later, the IT department led the planning and requirements of the system, and the business department complained every day that either the requirements were not met, or the business had a lot of problems running on the digital system.

In the context of digital transformation, as it involves business change and digitalization support, it requires close cooperation between the IT department and the business department, and it is even easier to fall into the whirlpool of meetings and communication if the responsibilities are not clear.

In the early days of the company's development, due to the rapid development of the company's business, while the IT capacity is relatively weak, so the construction mode is generally led by the business sector, the IT department with the cooperation. Under this model, the business sector puts forward its own departmental system requirements and system development planning, the IT department according to the requirements of the business sector to provide construction, operation and maintenance and other technical services.

The advantage of this model is the ability to quickly respond to the needs of the business sector. However, the disadvantage is that the business sector is often from the perspective of their own departmental requirements, the lack of the company's overall perspective, may not be in line with the company's overall development strategy; departmental and interdepartmental systems are often a lack of interaction and data sharing; the business sector tends to pay more attention to the degree of satisfaction of the business, ignoring the requirements of the security, scalability, scalability, operation and maintenance, external interfaces and other non-functional aspects; easy to form an information island, the subsequent Data sharing and system integration difficulties; not conducive to the unification of technology and architecture.

By the time the enterprise has built dozens of systems with different technologies, non-uniform interface standards, and data that cannot be shared, it finally realizes the problems that exist in this model. As a result, enterprises are prone to enter the construction mode led purely by the IT department. Under this model, the IT department to develop a unified IT planning and strategy, technical standards, interface standards, system construction is generally initiated by the business sector system construction requirements, the IT department to consider the priorities of the system construction.

The advantage of this model is that from the enterprise's point of view, the overall promotion of digital system planning and construction, which is conducive to the unity of the architecture and technical standards. The disadvantages are that due to budget and resource constraints, the IT department may not be able to take care of all the business departments in need; the departmental needs of the business departments are easily ignored, and it is difficult to make changes to the requirements; and the business departments may not necessarily recognize the system construction after it is completed.

In order to solve the problems of the above model, a more appropriate construction model should be: the IT department based on the overall strategy of the enterprise IT strategy and path planning, development of architecture and technical standards; business partners to respond to and promote business change.

This model is conducive to the overall perspective of the enterprise strategy and development to promote digital planning and construction; conducive to the integration of business and technology development, to prevent the separation of business and digitalization; conducive to the unity of the architecture and technical standards, system integration and data sharing. The disadvantage is that the professional level of the IT department and the quality of personnel requires a high level; requires a lot of cross-departmental interaction and collaboration.

The essence of digital transformation is business change based on digital technology, which requires the collaboration of business departments and IT departments. Designing a mechanism that facilitates close collaboration between IT and business departments is extremely important to the success of digital transformation and deserves careful consideration by enterprises.