I work in the SAP world and have found a pretty straightforward way to align IT to business rather than trying to align Business to IT.

1. Find out what actionable information the business uses or would LIKE to use.

2. Define the reporting and data requirements.

3. Develop the processes to support that data acquisition or business action.

Define / develop systems and applicaitons around the actionable business requirements.

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I have written a bit on this topic:

Aligning SAP Scope to Meaningful Business Requirements

http://www.r3now.com/aligning-sap-scope-to-meaningful-business-requirements