Stories by Thomas Hoffman

Internal IT marketing is scarce, survey finds

What we have here is a failure to communicate. According to a soon-to-be released survey of 277 CIOs and IT directors, nearly three-quarters of the respondents said they have had to cut their budgets by more than 15 percent over the past two years and that they think more effective communication with senior management about the value IT generates could have reduced those cutbacks by half.

Business intelligence tops 2003 tech ROI potential

As IT managers consider which technologies to invest in this year, they should exercise caution with supply chain and customer relationship management (CRM) projects but expect high yields from business intelligence (BI) efforts.

Market restructuring to drive higher energy IT spending

Although IT spending in the energy industry is expected to contract by 5 percent this year as companies cut back on infrastructure and enterprise applications spending, market restructuring is expected to generate an upside in lines of businesses such as transmission and distribution, according to a new study by Meta Group Inc.

Economist predicts IT spending snapback in '03

Corporate IT spending is about to undergo a "sharp snapback" to 5 percent to 10 percent annual growth once corporate profits begin rising again, according to Michael Mandel, BusinessWeek's chief economist who spoke at the Comdex IT Executive Symposium.

Investing now for the upturn later

Companies that successfully emerge from the current economic slump will be those that focus on technologies such as Web services and "adaptive" supply chain networks and closely align their IT managers with business unit and marketing leaders, said analysts at Forrester Research Inc.'s Executive Strategy Forum here this week.

ROI for Web services remains elusive

Although Web services are still in their infancy, a few trends have already begun to emerge. Among them: cost-justifying projects to senior management remains difficult, as IT managers struggle to find effective and consistent approaches to quantify their payback, according to attendees at a Software & Information Industry Association conference here yesterday.

Vendors lock horns on Web services standards

The good news for IT managers considering Web services deployments is that vendors such as Microsoft Corp., IBM Corp. and Oracle Corp. appear to be committed to creating standards aimed at facilitating interoperability between disparate technology platforms.

Business units inherit IT cost-justification duties

One of the more controversial predictions made by Gartner Inc. analysts at the consulting firm's Symposium/ITxpo 2002 conference this week is the notion that business units will eventually become responsible for proving the potential value of IT investments.

IT's role in shared services remains unclear

More than a decade after the inception of shared services -- whereby an independent business services group provides human resources, payroll, finance and other support services to business units -- many practitioners say they're still not sure whether it makes sense to bring IT operations under that umbrella.

Online training, e-business integration yield returns

Online learning and e-business integration projects are delivering the strongest returns on investment for companies, while customer relationship management (CRM), content management and online marketplace efforts are at the bottom of the list.

Utility-based deal cuts tennis group's IT costs

At this year's U.S. Open tennis tournament here, the organization that governs the sport in the U.S. tried to ace out high IT costs by joining the burgeoning move toward utility-based computing.

Study: E-learning, e-business integration yields returns

E-learning and e-business integration projects have generally delivered the best return on investment for companies this year, while customer relationship management (CRM), content management and e-marketplace efforts have fallen short.

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