GartnerGroup recently predicted that three out of four e-business projects around the world will fail due to poor planning and unrealistic expectations of new technology. Research director Joe Sweeney said he thought that Australian e-business projects could have an even higher failure rate, exacerbated by poorly defined objectives, internal politics, and overly optimistic perceptions of benefits.
Customer relationship management is truly the flavour of the day. Some companies talk about customer interaction systems, or enterprise relationship management, but however you refer to it, there's no doubt that software which helps companies interact more knowledgeably and effectively with their customers constitutes a very hot market.
Karl von Clausewitz described war as the continuation of diplomacy by other means. If for war and diplomacy you substitute book writing and marketing, then I believe you'll have an accurate idea of the intent behind Bill Gates' new book, Business @ the Speed of Thought.
One indicator of the extent to which information technology is penetrating the very bones of the business world is the increasing number of legally related issues threatening to bump heads with the average CIO.
There is a relatively inexpensive information system you can set up which can produce massive returns and which meshes IT intimately with your company's business strategy.
We've all read or heard tell of knowledge management and the "learning organisation" and a pile of other trendy terms. But why should people in your company -- let alone your contractors and business partners -- bother to share their information or knowledge?
How would you like it if hundreds of highly-skilled, qualified people from around the world volunteered their time to work on one of your products, invested thousands of hours in quality control, continuously suggested and made improvements for you -- and did it all for free?
Many CIOs talk a lot about "aligning IT with business". If they are really serious about this, then an excellent place to start would be to bone up on their calculation of return on investment (ROI).
The IT industry is always throwing up "gurus" who spout catchy buzzwords and claim to have the answer to where business is going.
ComputerWorld publisher Steve Ireland takes a page out of Stephen covey's book to find the habits of highly effective CIOs
ComputerWorld Publisher Steve Ireland on the perils of finding and retaining good IT staff
Steve Ireland, publisher of ComputerWorld, on how the Millenium Bug will change the development of IT-based business systems
Computerworld associate publisher Steve Ireland gives you the lowdown on Comdex
ComputerWorld Publisher Steve Ireland's regular colum. This month: death march projects -- one of the CIO's biggest fears
CIO's regular column by Steve Ireland, associate publisher of ComputerWorld. This month's topic: Human resources