John McCarthy, group director at Forrester Research, looked into CEO's attitudes to IT after hearing David Murray, CEO of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, comment at the World Congress on IT about the frustration many CEOs feel about the false expectations set up by the technology industry.
Forrester's McCarthy urges CEOs to instill a culture of discipline and measurement around IT, to resolve what he sees as this love-hate relationship.
-CEOs need to force business units and IT to define measureable objectives and then carefully track the ongoing results against the plan," he advises. -The gauges need to include internal and external measures. Not just ROI, but other important indicators like customer/supplier satisfaction or inventory turn in the whole supply chain."
McCarthy also suggests in his brief, -Australian CEO speaks out on the 'tech wreck', that CEOs need to drive a more unified approach by forming process teams made up of both IT and business executives.
Realising some benefits of IT are only seen in hindsight, McCarthy said.
-Not all the benefits are going to be clearly articulated at the onset of a project, because in well-managed companies technology acts as a catalyst for changing business processes," McCarthy said. -As a result, CEOs need to champion and invest in at least one project a year where the ROI is not cast in stone."
That headline conjures up Dilbertesque images of a pointy-headed boss trying to figure out how to send an email message on the PC that only his admin has ever touched.
2001.09.11
God bless America
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