Aligning corporate and IT goals and strategies in the oil and gas industry

Companies increasingly recognize that IT plays a significant role in their current and future business strategies, and IT departments increasingly need to justify their role in terms of contributions to business goals. Currently, little experience exists on how to effectively create this missing business-IT link. In 2010, ECOPETROL, a global player in the oil and gas industry, launched an initiative to align their IT activities with their overall business goals. IT is becoming a key information provider for making business-oriented decisions and achieving business success. Consequently, the view of IT is from that of a support organization to that of a value-creating information provider. This article describes how ECOPETROL is utilizing IT services to improve their competitiveness in the marketplace. They are applying the GQM + Strategies® approach for measurement-based IT-business alignment.