The Role of It Governance in Aligning Business Strategies at Airtel Kenya Limited

Abstract

The research sought to establish the role of IT Governance in aligning business strategies in communication industry. The study wa guided by the following objectives; to identify the extent of IT Governance at Airtel Kenya in aligning business strategies and to determine the practices Airtel Kenya use to align IT and Bu iness strategies. The study was done as a case study. The target population wa the top and 1 wcr management in IT at Airtel, Kenya. An interview guide was relied upon to qu ti n the people being interviewed. Data analysis was conducted using content analy is, since the data collected was qualitative. Data was presented using pie charts, bar charts and frequency tables. The findings of the study showed that Airtel Kenya has made efforts to align IT with business strategies. This was through having IT governance officer, involving most stakeholders in prioritization of IT projects, using measurement tools, holding informal meetings between IT and business executives and having ~ IT audit team at the Board level where majority of the respondents (85. 7%) reported that there was an IT audit committee while the other (14.4%) said that they were not sure. However, Airtel Kenya has no IT governance budget since 57.1% of the respondents said 'no' while 28.6% were not sure, the Board of Directors have insufficient IT expertise ( 42.9%) and the Board of directors did not participate actively in IT steering committee. There were also no IT governance awareness campaigns. These could affect the alignment of IT with business strategies negatively. The recommendations of the study were that there should be IT governance awareness campaigns as these would help the organization to provide visibility of what is happening in the IT department; the Board of Directors should sharpen their IT expertise so that they can be in a better position to handle IT related problems; the Board of Directors should participate more actively in the IT steering committees since they are the ones who make the major decisions at Airtel. This would enable them to know when things are going wrong hence take corrective measures. The researcher recommends that a similar research should be carried out in other organizations in Kenya especially the ones that are IT based.