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Failed Information Technology (IT) projects are common in organisations, as IT solutions often do not meet the expectations of business clients. Business experts often have a negative perception of the people working in the IT function. There seems to be a proverbial "chicken-and-egg situation": the relationship between business and IT suffers because IT projects fail to solve the real business need and, on the other hand, many IT projects fail because of existing interpersonal relationship problems between business- and IT employees. Research was done to identify categories of issues in the business-IT interface and rank them in order of significance. The term "fusion" is used in this paper, to refer to the process by which the elements of the IT function and the rest of the business work together to achieve a common goal. This paper reports on the categories of issues and draws a conclusion of what would constitute fusion in the business-IT interface. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite a variety of management tools, valuable management prescriptions, and the desire of information technology (IT) managers and business managers alike to build a better relationship, the current state of the IT-business relationship is far from ideal. Although many believe the difficulty in managing this relationship is rooted in differences in knowledge, culture, motivation, and language, we argue in this paper that the key to managing relationships is in the frame of reference and that a marketing perspective can prove valuable. We outline how concepts from marketing (e.g., price, product, customer, place, and promotion) are useful within an IT context and propose a marketing maturity model for IT executives to assess how to enhance their relationship with their business counterparts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]