Based in part on an "IT excellence survey" the think firm conducted among 162 technology decision makers at leading companies around the world, analyst Bobby Cameron concluded, "CEOs continue to treat IT as a cost center, as they don't see IT as a proactive source for business improvement or innovation."

He said Forrester analysts "found that IT is doing a great job of managing IT operations and aligning investment budgets with business organizations and strategies. But CIOs have done much less to drive business results, manage IT operations' relationship with the business, or help drive technology-based business innovation."

Further, Cameron said, "Emerging business technology will bring even greater demand for technology-based business results and innovation."

And, he warns, "CIOs who don't invest in overall IT excellence will find themselves relegated to the IT engine room while business execs take on the technology-based innovation role."

IT excellence in this case goes beyond simply keeping the servers and software running. It means becoming an integral part of determining and delivering business value with those tools.

Not having a seat at the table, including the board table, becomes even more precarious for senior IT managers as advancing technologies mean fewer actual technical skills are needed to launch new applications and processes.

Williams at Cornerstone Advisors echoes Forrester on that point. While he said the idea of BT is not necessarily new, Web services and similar open solutions that let programmers design screens and other key processes on-site are on the upswing and "really help burn a kind of understanding of the business right into the technology."

Working together to understand the intersection of business goals and processes and the technology that empowers them have become essential.

"An important message here is that it's no longer enough, it's no longer an excuse for a CIO to say, 'I can't get the business areas involved.' That's one of your main responsibilities–to get those areas involved," Williams said.

"For instance, your lending experts know the three steps they need in a new, automated loan process. The IT people can't know those but what they do know is the technology that can make that happen," he said.

"You need that kind of joining at the hip. Key to the idea of business technology is the getting past the idea that IT can magically create processes in the credit union. It has to be collaborative.

"All the great organizations that manage technology well have a culture that encourages or even forces that," Williams said. "There's got to be a kind of joining at the hip. Everyone has to get their fingernails dirty."

In credit union land, Williams points to Doug True and FORUM Solutions in Indianapolis as an example of "people who get it."

True, who came up through the ranks of retail delivery and lending at FORUM Credit Union before "morphing into a technologist," now is the president of an operation that develops and delivers automated lending platforms and other solutions to about 40 credit unions around the country, including his own. He also serves as senior vice president of technology for the parent CU, which just recently joined the billion-dollar club.

"We see our role as enablers," True said of his team at FORUM Solutions. "We get everyone together and find out what their needs are, and we talk about how technology should complement a business plan, not drive it.

"That's why the shift from IT to BT is right in my soft spot. That's kind of what we've done here at FORUM Solutions. We're part of the process.

We're involved in board retreats and executive planning sessions.

"And we have managed to turn a traditional cost center into a profit center."

He added, "Sitting on the board is still fairly new and not as prevalent at credit unions as it probably should be. In my mind, we save a lot of time and energy by being that involved right from the start."

Williams would agree, but said getting everyone involved isn't necessary for everything.

"The network, the telecom, the virus scan, you don't need collaboration to make that work," the Cornerstone Advisors consultant said. "BT is a good framework to describe things like CRM and loan systems and profitability systems that only work with business knowledge."

And he thinks that creative friction may be here to stay.

"I think in the end, it's one of those challenges that will always be there, just like there will always be issues between men and women in relationships," Williams said. "You just have to work at it if you're going to succeed."

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