Strategic alignment

Strategic alignment is the process and the result of linking an organization's structure and resources with its strategy and business environment (regulatory, physical, etc.) Strategic alignment enables higher performance by optimizing the contributions of people, processes, and inputs to the realization of measurable objectives and, thus, minimizing waste and misdirection of effort and resources to unintended or unspecified purposes. In the modern, global business environment, strategic alignment should be viewed broadly as encompassing not only the human and other resources within any particular organization but also across organizations with complementary objectives (i.e., performance/business partners).

"Strategic alignment" can also refer to a state in which a "company's business and product development strategies are aligned with its customers, users, and marketplace," leading to economic success. This use of the term was first coined by Joanna Malaczynski, a UX design thinker and Principal Consultant at DESi. See desipotential.com

See also

• Strategy Markup Language (StratML), whose purposes include facilitating strategic alignment through the establishment of literal linkages among performance indicators and the strategic goals and objectives they support.
• Environmental scanning
• Competition

References

• United States Office of Personnel Management's overview of strategic alignment in the context of human capital management
• ARMA International's discussion of strategic alignment in the context of records and information management, July/August 2007
• Articles on strategic alignment provided by Resource Management Systems, Inc.
• Strategy 101: It's All About Alignment, Forbes, October 16, 2012
• Strategic alignment of business processes, E. D. Morrison, A. K. Ghose, H. K. Dam, K. G. Hinge, K. Hoesch-Klohe, University of Wollongong, December 5, 2011
• The Case for Strategic Alignment, white paper by The Knowledge Compass, Inc.