IT in the unique position to understand the problems each executive in a business may need to address.
This is according to Val Sribar, Gartner group VP, speaking at Gartner ITxpo/Symposium Africa 2009, in Cape Town, yesterday.
“The toughest part of implementing an IT project is to get all the executives to agree on what they want.”
He added that IT generally has all the tools available to analyse what problems are experienced in any given business process, making it perfectly placed to solve executive concerns.
However, he noted that currently there is a theme of concerns that all executives are expressing in the global economic downturn. “Everyone is talking about cost controls and they are all playing off the Web somehow.”
According to Sribar, the trick is to talk about the entire business, and not individually managed segments. He added that an increased IT budget could mean a decrease in the entire business cost, or an increase in group revenue.
Sribar pointed out that there are some easy solutions to address the cost concerns. The first step should be retiring old technologies and projects.
According to Sribar, many companies continue to add projects and maintenance costs, while considering new projects, which grow operations costs. Reusing old technology in new ways can also bring down costs.
Companies now need to ask where the value is left; for Sribar it's projects that span entire life cycles and cover all the concerns at the executive table.
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