Management ideas: Five trends that will shape business technology in 2009

Some useful ideas from McKinsey.

It has happened before, the downturn in 2001 affected corporate spending on IT in a significant fashion. This time around though, IT plays a more prominent role, IT budgets are larger, IT governance mechanisms have streamlined organizations and e-commerce has already moved to the core of operations so IT organizations are leaner, larger, and even more important.

Trend1: IT and corporate finance will converge

  • 2009 will be the year that the CFO will get involved with IT simply because capital is scarce and there is so much of it locked up in IT assets.
  • Cost cutting/capital saving measures: outsourcing, software-as-a service, sell hard assets and lease them back, more use of vendor financing

Trend2: Increasing internal competition for IT budgets

  • Since budgets will be tight and IT is a strategic driver, competition between business units will intensify
  • CIO’s will have to be honest brokers

Our comment:

  • Business knowledge to weigh rational decisions will be critical, now more than ever, IT and business need to understand one another and technology decisions have to be made with a solid business view

Trend3: The ‛last‛ IT project?

  • Because the large uncertainties and disparaties in IT project returns, many of the least successful companies will not start any new IT project during the downturn

Our comment

  • IT needs better government and, as we already mentioned above, more infusion of business knowledge to justify projects
  • A more piecemeal, modular approach like SOA could be useful

Trend4: Regulators demand more from IT

  • Public scrutiny of business will increase, requiring more accurate data produced (largely) by IT systems, providing better insight into how banks manage risk, pharma companies manage drugs, and industrial companies manage environmental risks, for instance.
  • Warrants closer cooperation between IT and legal departments.

Trend5: The offshoring and outsourcing landscape shifts

  • The landscape of vendors has become much more competitive, and a shake up is likely
  • Successful CIOs will manage their vendors as a portfolio so they will be well positioned as new winners evolve

Our comment

  • Indeed, vendor management should be part of any intelligent IT governance system, like ITIL.

2 thoughts on “Management ideas: Five trends that will shape business technology in 2009”

  1. haha, finally a topic where I can offer an educated opinion! I don’t disagree with any of the above statements but I would like to add the following:

    With the 5 identified trends, IT will indeed become more prominent, but it is my belief that there is a major awareness deficiency in IT security from both a technical perspective and a cultural one.

    While the technical understanding is a problem it is a relatively quick to fix if there is a breach. Unfortunately, in my opinion, the cultural attitude is the one area that will be exploited to a degree that will take identity theft and thus indirectly corporate asset theft to stratospheic levels.

    Sooo, if I may be so bold, I would like to add a Trend 6: Changing awareness about sensitive personal and corporate information as a result of increased education in both the public and private sectors.

  2. We agree. All those unprotected USB drives full of sensitive info, the easy passwords, etc.

    Information Security Management is part of ITIL, for instance. Should be given more priority.

    Thanks for the comments, Darcy

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