The case for re‐examining IT effectiveness

Priya Kurien (Priya Kurien is a Principal Consultant with Infosys. Her experience includes a decade of defining, designing and implementing IT solutions for clients across a range of industries, and involvement in the definition and design of processes and metrics for Infosys and its clients (priya_kurien@infosys.com).)

Was Rahman (Was Rahman is a member of the European leadership team of Infosys, where his responsibilities include the energy & utilities practice and development of industry and cross‐functional solutions. His current interests include re‐examining the role of technology in transforming businesses (was_rahman@infosys.com).)

V.S. Purushottam (V.S. Purushottam is a Principal Consultant with Infosys. His experience includes a decade of client consulting on technology strategy, process improvement and financial effectiveness, and raising venture capital for start‐up and growth funding software and Internet infrastructure firms (Purushottam_vs@infosys.com).)

Journal of Business Strategy

ISSN: 0275-6668

Publication date: 1 April 2004

Abstract

As the global economy moves upward, we believe that the lessons learned during the economic downturn to make IT more effective are not only applicable but also critical to ensure that IT continues to deliver greater value to business. Infosys is today a global provider of technology services and solutions and, as part of a two decade transformation to this current state, has learned valuable lessons, described in this paper, on how to improve IT effectiveness. There is a basic need for efficient delivery of software solutions by IT organizations. However, only when IT is aligned to meet the broader business needs and is able to operate in a sufficiently flexible manner, can effectiveness be achieved. We discuss an IT effectiveness framework that we believe is important to help achieve this state. With this basic framework, we then look at four of the key lessons to improving IT effectiveness: managing to balance supply and demand, the need to measure value, the practical lessons from process improvement benchmarks, and active business case management.