ABSTRACT

Mr Ron Gardoll

Associate Director

DMR Consulting Group

Redefining Value in the Extended Enterprise

Ladies & Gentlemen: Information Technology is everywhere. Its expected long term impacts are routinely compared to other technologies such as electricity, the internal combustion engine, the Gutenberg printing press ... even the wheel. Despite the supposed inevitability of technological change, many executives hesitate before committing funds to large-scale IT investments. Bottom line .... a common management perception of these investments is: "High up-front costs. High project implementation risks. Undefined business opportunities down the road.

As the world transitions from a cluster of industrial economies to a global knowledge-based economy these challenges are greater than ever. In the knowledge economy, technology is fundamentally changing our lives, the way we interact with others and the way we do business. While business managers acknowledge that they struggled to make the right IT investment decisions in the past they were at least comforted by the fact that those decisions, good and bad, were contained within their enterprise boundaries.

Today, the knowledge economy's insatiable appetite for new value-adding information processes demands that IT investment decisions embrace customers and trading partners. This trend increases the complexity, the costs and the risks. Business is struggling to keep up with the implications of this shift and is finding the traditional decision making models of little value. This paper presents a framework for managers to mobilise their organisation for the new millennium and make the IT investment decisions that will deliver value to their organisation.

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