When it comes to reviewing business processes and driving business initiatives forward, how many times have you hit a stumbling block because IT systems have been too complex and rigid to adapt to the necessary changes?

This is a common complaint among businesses, and many have found that the IT changes required for business projects that can provide competitive advantage take so long to implement that the advantage has is lost.

In a world where the vast majority of business processes are supported in some way by technology, it is essential that the technology is able to adapt as the business does. The problem is that this is no longer the case.

As organisations have become more reliant on technology, systems have become more complex, and organisations have found that rather than driving the business forward, technology often holds it back.

This was highlighted in recent research by Vanson Bourne, with 55 per cent of IT directors stating that they have not been able to undertake projects to make improvements to the business because the IT systems have been too rigid and complex.

This is the age-old problem with IT, and although a solution – service-oriented architecture (SOA) – is now emerging, it has been bogged down by technology-speak and acronyms, meaning that there is a great deal of confusion surrounding the approach and the benefits it can bring.

In fact, 66 per cent of IT directors questioned believed that SOA is hype and just another marketing term.

The Vanson Bourne research also showed that 28 per cent of IT directors believe that SOA is simply about software development and architecture.

The main problem is that with all the acronyms and marketing speak, many people, including those at board level that hold the budgets, simply do not understand what SOA is and what benefits it can bring.

When you consider that SOA was first only really talked about in relation to web services, and over time has become a major focus area for all the big software vendors, it is easy to see why this perception exists.

In fact, software development and architecture is just one piece of the SOA puzzle. SOA is not a technology but an approach.

At its core, SOA is about re-engineering the IT function so that it is able to promote the development and re-use of services that can then be pieced together to support a business process.

This helps to significantly increase the speed and efficiency of technology in responding to changes in processes or new business initiatives.

Although it will not happen overnight, if IT departments can transform to become services-focused, no longer will they be the function that is constantly saying no, but instead they will be an area that is driving the business forward.

To allow IT to respond in this way, SOA needs to be pitched and understood at board level, not only to get the budget required but also the support needed to push through a big project.

IT directors need to talk to the board not in terms of technology, but in terms of the underlying business processes and how technology is holding them back. Gaining senior support is often the biggest barrier to any IT project, but SOA is not just another IT project – it is an enabler of business transformation, and this is what IT directors need to communicate.

For the board to thoroughly understand SOA, IT directors need to explain the approach in terms of what it can do for the business, using examples of where competitive advantage has been lost because of the time taken to implement a new business initiative.

Implementing SOA will mean this scenario doesn’t happen, as it enables the IT division to become more service-oriented and focused on business needs, as opposed to matching the business needs to the technology in place. As a result, SOA enables organisations to be more agile and respond faster to changes in the wider business environment, which is surely what every chief executive wants to hear.

SOA is not an instant fix. It is about changing the way IT works in your organisation to make it work for you, instead of the other way around. If SOA is approached in a business-oriented manner it can take the complexity and rigidity out of technology, making it more agile and supportive of the business goals your organisation wants to achieve.

Fundamentally, SOA stops technology from holding your business back. As a result, it should be as high as possible on the chief executive’s agenda in every organisation.

Melvin James is a director at Diagonal Consulting