The pressure on IT has always been there to deliver. I recall the 80s when the business-IT alignment was on everybody's lips, the 90s when the IT-facilitated business process re-engineering and kaizan were talk of the town and the new economic order was proclaimed by the web-based companies at the turn of the century. IT was always deemed indispensable in these initiatives but adjudged to be slow to meet the business needs. The bursting of the dotcom bubble and the y2k experience tarnished the IT image but did not abet the pressure on IT to facilitate inter-organisational processes in a globalised world. IT's role was still at the heart of 'making it happen'. One assumed that the ERP systems had taken care of all the transactional needs at the operational level and the datawarehouses and business intelligence tools had enamoured the business executives by adding value to strategy formulation. Now comes the frightening reminder that all is not well in the wake of global financial meltdown.
"Capital expenditure priorities are shifted into IT from other high-payback projects" just to perform necessary ERP changes, claims one executive. Whilst another bemoans: "Change to ERP paralyzes the entire organization in moving forward in other areas that can bring more value."
An Accenture partner sees rising tide of operational flexibility on daily basis and proclaims "strategy, as we knew it, is dead." A paradigm shift in IT's execution is expected and demanded in this new world order. Yet the top priority for 2009 was "modernizing key legacy applications" and the SOA, the pre-requisite for flexibility, seemed fatally wounded.
It is a challenge to all the IT professionals to acquire a mindset attuned with business imperatives and successfully deploy disruptive technologies to make a quantum change. The decade ahead of us is full of potential and we must not fail.
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