Gartner is espousing business and information technology alignment at their Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2007 in Orlando this week. They caught my eye in the Wall St. Journal with 3 full-pages outlining the Six Business Imperatives that organizations face and that can be exploited by the right technology & processes. Here is our take on the first two imperatives (Gartner analyst names are in parentheses):
1. Attracting and Retaining Customers (Michael Maoz)
- “The customer never buys what you think you sell. And you don’t know it.” – Peter Drucker
- Analyzing buying behaviors, emerging customer needs, and industry trends, then feeding conclusions and plans into product & service development helps pinpoint the making, marketing, and selling of your most profitable products.
- See our Blog entry on Organic Growth:
http://businessfoundation.typepad.com/bf_blog/2007/09/organic-growth-.html
2. Building an Agile and Innovative Organization (Kathy Harris)
- Operational excellence: we at the Business Foundation have sometimes seen this phrase as a euphemism for cost cutting. When truly embraced as ‘excellence,’ though, it can have a positive impact on revenue growth, cashflow, market share, and margin. Included here could be the elimination of duplicate efforts, standardization of systems & processes, and being prepared to react quickly to operational changes (an acquisition, for example).
- Innovative spirit and Persistent agility: the ability to sense (environment, industry, competitive) changes and respond accordingly. This is assisted by benchmark trending and analysis, profitability analytics, and solutions that allow you to have control over your master data management (changing information hierarchies as your entity and product roll-ups change).
The remaining four imperatives are:
3. The Business Process Improvement Imperative (Improving critical business processes and workflows) (David McCoy)
4. Improve Workforce Effectiveness (Diane Morello)
5. Managing Governance, Risk, and Compliance (French Caldwell)
6. Maximize performance, profitability and competitiveness (Mark McDonald)
For more information, check out www.gartner.com.
The "New IT" isn't just about cost cutting and fixing pain - it's about competitive advantage and out-performance. IT should look to xPM as a foundation for enabling and managing these business imperatives.
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