Monday, January 25, 2010

A return to high risk, low reward IT spending?

IT spending is to grow 4.6% worldwide, according to Gartner. Obviously this is good news, since it is an indicator that companies are starting to have spare cash to focus on a growing workforce and helping the business operations work better. The big question is whether companies will go back to blindly throwing money at Microsoft's next big marketing campaign, or whether they'll choose to invest in software and SaaS that can demonstrate a real return on investment.

There are many techniques that companies could be using to assess where to focus their new-found IT budgets. They range from the extremely time-consuming studies by teams of consulting from the top consulting firms, down to the surprisingly simple and effective process-value analysis run internally or facilitated by an experienced business process improvement consultant. Consected has a 7 step guide to process improvement that many process and industry experts have given me feedback on. If you follow your gut around some business decisions, this may help you move from 'gut feel' to something actionable and easy to put into practice.

As money starts to become available inside businesses, will they choose to gamble on the high-stakes, low reward game of the mega-vendors? Or is it time to see how some simple thinking, smart technology and rapid solutions could really make the business better.


A post from the Improving It blog

To implement workflow and process automation in your business today, visit www.consected.com

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