IT Projects & Results

Corporate IT projects- underwhelming results

or been outright failures.
Catastrophes
Frustration, delay, and disappointment are all
too common.

2005 Survey
By IT consultancy CSC and the Financial
Executives Research Foundation
782 American executives responsible for IT
50% of the respondents admitted that
aligning business and IT strategy - was a major
problem.
The researchers found that 51% of large-scale
IT efforts finished later than expected and ran
over budget.

2005 Survey
Only 10% of companies believed they were
getting high returns from IT investments; 47%
felt that returns were low, negative, or
unknown.

Discussion
His main point, is that failure to understand or
appreciate technology is unacceptable.
Executives need to stop looking at IT projects
as technology installations and start looking at
them as periods of organizational change that
they have a responsibility to manage.
.. and

 But managers who distance themselves from

IT abdicate a critical responsibility
.. and
executives usually operate without a
comprehensive model of what IT does for
companies, how it can affect organizations,
and what managers must do to ensure that IT
initiatives succeed.

CCR Model
Capability
Complementary
Responsibility

Enterprise IT has the following

primary capabilities
Redesigning business processes. Because CVS
employees couldnt fill prescriptions until they
had completed the two checks in the new
sequence, the revamped fulfillment process
wasnt just a good idea in theoryCVS
employees had to execute the process in that
particular sequence. EIT gives managers
confidence that employees will execute
processes correctly.

Enterprise IT.
Standardizing work flows. Once companies
identify a complementary business process,
they can implement it widely and reliably
along with the EIT. CVS rolled out its new
process in 4,000 outlets across the United
States in less than a year.

Enterprise IT.
Monitoring activities and events efficiently.
EITs can allow managers to get an accurate
and up-to-date picture of whats happening
throughout the enterprise, often in something
close to real time. CVSs software lets
executives know how many prescriptions are
filled every day in each location, how long it
takes to fill each prescription, and what kinds
of fulfillment problems employees had to
tackle.

Across the three IT categories, executives have three

tasks

IT Selection
IT Adoption
IT Exploitation

IT selection
The discussion centres on the importance of
clearly understanding the business
requirement first, then the technology
requirement will be clearer.
Once the companys business needs are clear, the
technologies it requires will come into focus

IT adoption
The biggest mistake business leaders make is
to underestimate resistance when they
impose changes in the ways people work.

IT exploitation
A business leaders third IT-related
responsibility is to extract the maximum
benefit from technologies once they are in
place
Its all good stuff, and forms the basis of a
model to have an intelligent conversation with
the IT groups.