Nine Dialogues – Making Wise Technology Expenditures

Nine Dialogues – Making Wise Technology Expenditures

This article is about your money and how you spend it.

It is not about the Internet, PDA's or other hand-held devices, or OO technology or any other buzzwords floating around.It is about a very legitimate concern:

Is the money spent on Information Technology (IT) really helping my business?

Consider this:

For several years now, we have observed the frustration- sometimes even exasperation- that many business executives feel toward information technology and their IT departments. Our center runs a seminar called ‘IT for the Non-IT Executive”, and the refrain among the more than 1,000 senior managers who have taken the course runs something like this: “What can I do? I don’t understand IT well enough to manage it in detail. And my IT people although they work hard- don’t seem to understand the very real business problems I face.

Perhaps the complaint we hear most frequently from the executives- most of them CEOs, COOs, CFOs, or other high ranking officers- is that they haven’t realized much business value form the high priced technology they have installed. Meanwhile, the list of seemingly necessary IT capabilities continues to grow, and IT spending continues to consume an increasing percentage of their budgets. Where’s the payback?

Indeed, our research into IT management practices at hundreds of companies around the world has shown that most organizations are not generating the value from IT investments that they could be. The companies that manage their IT investments most successfully generate returns that are as much as 40% higher than those of their competitors.

While a number of factors distinguish these top-performing companies, the most important is that senior managers take a leadership role in a handful of key IT decisions.By contrast, when senior managers abdicate responsibility for those decisions to IT executives, disaster often ensues."

Jeanne W. Ross, Peter Weill

How can you (CEO) communicate with your IT management to influence effective technology use and instill confidence that you are making the right decisions? For over twenty years, we have helped organizations effectively use technology. The Nine Dialogues are an outgrowth of that.The Nine Dialogues represent frequent and consistent communication between CEOs and IT management.Technology is an answer and there is great pressure to not be left behind. But, the stuff DOES cost money.How do you do the right thing?The dialogues are not intended to replace regular meetings or reporting; they are intended to infiltrate them. The dialogues should facilitate visible and meaningful changes in the way you do things.

The Dialogues:

ENKI, Inc. offers IT solutions: Computer training and consulting on site or at our site, customized to meet our clients requirements. Our IT training and consulting services include: Project Management, Systems Analysis and Development, Web to Client Server Application Development, Database Design and Development, and Desktop Applications. Enki, Inc. is located in Baltimore Maryland.