Business and IT alignment

Over the last two decades, the need for the alignment of business needs and opportunities of information technology (IT) has been considered one of the key issues in IT management. Research in the field of business and IT alignment gained momentum in the last decade of the last century when it was realized that the cost- effectiveness of IT investments directly contributed to the so-called strategic alignment, ie. alignment between business strategy and IT strategy. It is recognized that IT changes the direction in which companies organize their business processes, communication with customers and deliver their products and services. The aim of this study is to investigate the current situation in solving the problem of business and IT alignment in order to allow a comparison of different definitions and a conceptualization of this phenomenon, and also to consider the efforts made so far in order to solve this problem. The conceptualization of the phenomenon of alignment of business and IT is given through the strategic alignment model that had the biggest impact in this area. The question of the applicability of the model and the framework developed for the purpose of alignment stems from the challenges facing the problem of alignment of business and IT. These challenges are categorized and particularly elaborated in this paper.