IT's importance in today' business climate

March 10, 2005

In the past two years, one of the most influential business articles was Nicholas Carr's "IT Doesn't Matter," which was published in the Harvard Business Review in 2003.

One of the responses to Carr, framed by John Seely Brown and John Hagel III, noted that, "The differentiation is not in IT itself but in the new practices it enables."

This insight is also at the heart of a new survey conducted by The Economist on behalf of SAP. According to the survey, which tapped mostly CEOs, over 80 percent of businesses believe that "technology will be critical to their company's ability to adapt business models and implement strategy [by 2010]" while about 60 percent believe that "IT is becoming more of a competitive tool rather than simply a driver of cost efficiency."

Increasingly, says the survey, the things that differentiate and empower a company -- regulating the supply chain, responding to demand, refining knowledge of customers, recruiting and recognizing the best human capital, increasing productivity, obtaining management metrics, &c. -- are achievable largely through IT systems.

Indeed, as Line56 has also argued, the conceptual model of strategy is shored up at every stage by the proper application of e-business tools.

As the survey concludes, "The Internet will continue to drive or influence many more changes in business in the coming years. All the more important that organizations assimilate some of its chief attributes."

Source: Line 56