2003 -- a CIO's guide
Published: 02 Jan 2003 12:57 GMT
Internal marketing and the real time enterprise
To many, the most unpalatable suggestion from Gartner may well be the idea of marketing the IT department to the rest of the company. If you wanted to be in marketing you'd be in marketing, not a CIO! However, IT departments have had a bad reputation since the Year 2000 panic and the dotcom boom, and vultures may be gathering.
Disturbingly, according to Gartner, other management's attitudes to IT departments are languishing in the lower half of its credibility range, between "scepticism" and "acceptance", still some way short of "trust" or the ultimate level "respect".
The problem, is that telling the other departments how good IT is, could be counterproductive. Part of the answer may be that the "next step" for IT is one which will automatically impinge on the other department heads. What Gartner refers to as the "real time enterprise" (others have different names) is one which has to affect senior management.
Gartner's promotion of the "real-time enterprise" sounds a lot like its "zero latency enterprise" concept of a few years back, but the difference is that this time the concept must be applied to management itself, says Mahoney.
Technology (or at least the magic "e-" prefix) has been applied to all aspects of the business to make them faster and more efficient. Now the only thing left to "e-" is management, according to Gartner. It is time to replace the messy email "adhocracy", they say.
Decision times should be reduced, year on year, says Mahoney. Banks that once took a month to assess a mortgate application should aim to do it in a week, then a year later do it in a day.
Real-time enterprise technologies to watch for include
- Tagging Identifying objects on the production line and even after sale, to improve processes
- Business Activity Modelling (BAM) The new name for EAI and enterprise dashboard, that give executives a view of what is important in the company
- Instant Messaging (IM) This gets a swift reaction from people, because it provides "presence" and "dialogue"
- Web services By allowing systems to be linked, these can underly many other real time enterprise technologies.
Try out IM and web services
Gartner believes the next two things to try out are instant messaging and web services. Both are at an early stage of use in business, but are ready for pilots.
IM is perhaps the most interesting, because it is already widespread amongst consumers, and may appear "virally" in the company without the IT manager putting it in. "In some call centres, were desktops are not locked down, intelligent staff are putting in IM in order to do their jobs properly," says Mahoney.
IM has taken off faster in US for business than in Europe, but Gartner reckons that European businesses should be trying it out now.
Conclusion: results will show
There are organisations that show what can be done with efficient IT, says Mahoney. "The low cost European air carriers are showing the way," he said. They have much less than the IT spend of the traditional airlines -- around one percent of their revenue compared with four percent by the competition. The low cost carriers are making more efficient use of their technology, he says. Selling online means the company gets hold of the money (from the credit card companies) quicker than it would otherwise do, so the new service offered by the IT is well aligned with the business need.
Of course, they had the benefit of starting from scratch, so they don't have to bother with turning off legacy systems. Whatever situation you are in, Tech Update wishes you the best for 2003. We will continue to inform you throughout the year.
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