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8 - 10 April 2002
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Florence, Italy
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IT For the Business - Friend or Foe
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Paolo Magrassi, Vice President and Research Director,
Gartner | | |
Tuesday 9 April 2002
Paolo Magrassi said "Scepticism is mounting as to the role of IT as a valid business weapon after it was so over hyped during the new economy."
Speaking at Symposium ITxpo in Florence, Italy, the Vice President and Research Director said "the debate among economists as to whether or not IT is a contributor to growth is all the rage. However, the only clear thing we all know is that there is a distinct lack of assessment measures to enable us to see if they are right or wrong."
For example, Magrassi said, accounting and national statistics are inadequate to capture changes in intangible values, such as product quality, customer choice or speed to market.
"Furthermore," said Magrassi, "this discussion risks shadowing the real issue; not all enterprises use IT the same way." The old saying still rings true for Magrassi, that its not how much money is spent on IT, the question is how is it used.
Magrassi believes that only a few enterprises are able to exploit IT as an enabler of increased productivity or business change, but the majority simply adopt IT in the hope that it will, by itself, provide competitive advantage. "Those who have leveraged IT successfully are enterprises that deployed vast organisational changes in parallel with the adoption of IT."
According to Magrassi, enterprises should use this difficult economic time to turn previous IT investments into business orientated solutions which add to productivity or ability to compete. "IT investment on its own will only improve the vendors balance sheets" warned Magrassi, "not the operational performance or long term health of your enterprise."
By Andrew Spender, Gartner
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