Most companies treat IT as a necessary expense, something to manage rather than leverage. That thinking costs businesses millions in missed opportunities and wasted resources. Chris DeNoia has spent over 20 years proving there’s a better way. As VP of IT, CISO, and board member with Carnegie Mellon Certified Leader, he’s built his career on a simple idea: technology should drive business growth, not just support it.
Starting With the Business Vision
There’s a reason so many IT departments end up disconnected from the rest of the business. They build technology roadmaps without understanding where the company is actually headed. DeNoia has watched this play out across healthcare, manufacturing, and finance sectors. “You can’t align IT to business value unless you’re crystal clear on what the business is trying to achieve,” he explains.
Getting that clarity means sitting at the leadership table and asking questions that might make some people uncomfortable. When executives talk about expanding markets or improving customer retention, someone needs to translate that into what technology can actually deliver. Say the company wants to break into a new market in six months. “IT needs to deliver the infrastructure, the tools, and the security posture to support that timeline, not after it,” DeNoia points out. Seems obvious, but you’d be surprised how often IT finds out about major initiatives after the timeline is already set.
Building Roadmaps That Actually Mean Something
Walk into most IT departments and ask to see their roadmap. You’ll get pages filled with project names, dates, and budget numbers. What you won’t get is any sense of why those projects matter to the business. DeNoia takes a different approach. “An effective IT roadmap doesn’t just list projects. It tells a story about how technology will create value.”
Every initiative needs to connect to something tangible. Revenue growth. Cost cuts. Better customer experience. Meeting new regulations. Pick your outcome and build backwards from there. DeNoia has guided plenty of organizations through this shift, and it’s not always comfortable. People who’ve spent years thinking in terms of projects suddenly have to focus on results instead. But that’s where the magic happens. When teams stop celebrating deployments and start celebrating actual business impact, priorities shift fast. Nobody cares if you finished on time if the thing you built doesn’t move the needle.
Measuring Success In Business Terms
Here’s where most IT leaders completely lose the plot. They walk into executive meetings armed with uptime statistics and ticket closure rates. Meanwhile, the CFO is trying to figure out how to hit next quarter’s numbers and the CEO is worried about competition eating their lunch. “True alignment means measuring success in business terms, not just uptime or ticket closures, but revenue impact, operational efficiency, and customer retention,” DeNoia explains.
Learning to speak that language takes real work. A security upgrade focuses on reducing risk and maintaining the customer trust that keeps revenue flowing, not just protecting data. Modernizing infrastructure means launching products quicker than competitors can, not just running faster servers. DeNoia has spent years bridging this gap. “IT leaders must speak the language of the boardroom,” he notes. Get the metrics right and suddenly technology insights start driving strategy instead of following it.
Talk is cheap. Business leaders need proof that IT investments actually pay off. That means tracking the numbers they care about: customer acquisition costs, time to market, operational efficiency gains. Not server uptime or how fast the help desk answers calls. This shift changes everything in how companies view technology spending. DeNoia has seen it happen multiple times. Instead of treating IT as an expense to minimize, leadership teams start asking how technology can help them win. The budget conversation transforms from “what’s this going to cost us” to “what can we accomplish with this.”
When IT strategy actually connects to business goals, companies can move differently. They’re faster because technology enables instead of constrains. They serve customers better because systems support what people are trying to do rather than fighting them. They enter new markets with confidence because their foundation is ready to scale. “When IT strategy is directly tied to business goals, you don’t just improve systems, you unlock growth, agility, and competitive advantage,” he says. The formula isn’t complicated. Understand where the business is headed. Translate that into technology requirements. Measure success in business terms. Simple on paper, harder in practice. But that’s how IT transforms from something businesses tolerate into something they actually leverage for growth. DeNoia keeps pushing this message across boardrooms and IT departments. Technology either drives value or it drains resources. There’s not much middle ground. The companies that figure this out early get a real edge. The ones that don’t? They keep wondering why their competitors are moving faster.
Follow Chris DeNoia on LinkedIn for more insights on aligning IT strategy with real business outcomes.
