Chapter 1. Real-World Evidence

Would any self-respecting executive willingly throw millions of dollars at an investment without knowing how it could affect his or her business? The sane answer to this question is "No." But many company leaders make this exact mistake when they blindly allocate money to IT with little concern if it is put to good use or even for the objectives they are trying to meet in the first place. Imagine a pair of children who lob snowballs at each other over a high wooden fence. Neither child can see where their volleys are landing ”or even the target that they're trying to hit in the first place ”but they keep throwing anyway. Now imagine each snowball costs a million dollars. It's kind of like that.

Ironically, it took one of the most irrational periods in recent history ”the New Economy bubble ”to return companies to rational thinking about how they invest in IT. After the dust settled from the dotcom collapse, companies surveyed the wreckage to find out what went wrong ”and to ensure that it wouldn't go wrong again. Not surprisingly, one of the major problems they discovered was the "business/technology disconnect," a frequent, behind-the-scenes player that's been wreaking mayhem and madness since the earliest days of IT.

Don't just take my word for it, though. The best way to illustrate the true impact of the business/technology disconnect is to look at real-world scenarios. These scenarios stretch from before Amazon.com was a twinkle in Jeff Bezos' eye, to after Enron stock started showing up on eBay as laminated placemats. Throughout each vignette, notice a recurring trend: When companies align their use of technology with sound business objectives, the results are good; but when companies don't, bad things can ”and often do ”happen.

Enterprise Disconnects and Managing for the Short Term

"One thing that we see over and over is that technology evolution leads to disconnects with business. The obvious reason for this is that business and technology aren't innovated hand-in-hand. A lot of technology is created in a vacuum , simply because it can be done, and without a comprehensive connection as to how it should be used in the business environment.

Look at the personal computer, for example. When the PC first came along some CIOs viewed it as an entry-level system rather than something completely new and disruptive. Eventually, it got in the hands of middle managers and employees , and they led the revolution that molded it into the powerful business tool it is today.

This same story has played itself out with the Internet. After lots of amazing innovation up front ”the browser, ubiquitous access to information, global connectivity ”executives decided that the Net would be used to sell things. And this sells the Internet short the same way that using the PC as an entry-level mainframe did. The truth is that the Internet ”like the PC before it ”really provides an opportunity for business transformation.

The thing that's going to drive this transformation is a concept that I call Managing for the Short Term. In the age of connectivity, companies face lots of external demands: from the stock market; from customers; from business partners , etc. To respond to these demands businesses need to be able to turn in a much shorter timeframe than they've had to before, and it is technology and the Internet that's going to enable that.

But most of the technology that we have in place today ”CRM, ERP, and so forth ”are just the tip of the iceberg; when they are done only by a department or even several departments, they are not really end-to-end.

To successfully manage for the short term, all this technology needs to be connected all the way through the supply chain, from distributors to customers. This is going to drive a new emphasis on alignment within the enterprise."

” Chuck Martin, Author, The Digital Estate, Net Future, and Max E-Marketing In the Net Future; chairman and CEO, Net Future Institute