With the Internet and dotcom boom going through something of a refocus, many companies are looking carefully at how they are going to be spending their technology rands.
This is according to Craig Levy, Managing Director of IT consultancy company, Ensquared, who adds: "While the Internet boom was largely about reaching out to customers and partners outside the perimeters of the companies themselves, these days technology decision makers are definitely looking more inward."
According to the latest research, of the top five corporate IT priorities, just one of them - customer relationship management (CRM) - is focused outwards. Interestingly, it is ranked fourth. The other top priorities include integrated existing software applications, data warehousing, messaging and expanding internal data networks. This is according to research conducted at 300 corporate IT departments in the United States by the Adams, Harkness & Hill Technology Services Group.
Levy said it was exceedingly interesting to note that supply chain management fell right to the bottom of the IT priority list. "This is quite a revelation because most market analysts and IT publications are constantly talking about supply chain management and how necessary it is. It is really one of the big buzzwords at the moment - yet corporates themselves seem to have relegated it to a position of secondary, 'we will finish it later' importance."
But the research did reveal that although supply chain management had been somewhat relegated down the 'to do' list, companies still expressed an interest in this solution - but intimated it would be more of a future project. "Getting supply chain management systems in place properly can be a very complicated task requiring fancy software and a lot of development time. Of course, it often requires a lot of rands, too. Companies want their technology investments to show real results in the near term - they do not want to invest right now in technology that is expensive and will only arguably bear fruit way down the road."
This means that companies are looking at their bottom lines; they want to see a real ROI (return on investment). And some are clearly gun-shy - or rand-shy - after being caught up in the immense hype of the dotcom boom when investors, companies and individuals threw money at just about anything that involved the Internet and Internet-based technology.
And, said Levy, if one looks at the statistics, they seem to corroborate this standpoint; technology spending in the first quarter of this year fell at an annualised rate of 6,6%.
For further information contact Ensquared, (011) 788 8445.
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