The failure of computer technology to deliver on ambitious promises of bottom-line value, together with a number of conspicuous systems disasters, has led many top managers to question the notion that IT can be used to gain competitive advantage. They are not alone. A recent MIT study found little evidence for any direct link between investment in IT and improved bottom-line performance.1 Thus, with something close to a sigh of relief, many senior executives have returned to the familiar, low-tech world of quality management, front-line empowerment, and even business process reengineering to drive necessary organizational change.
Reconfiguring skills and organization around the intelligence inherent in the technology works—and the benefits are huge
Their timing is unfortunate. In the past, IT’s troubling lack of business value has stemmed as much from a failure to reconfigure skills and organization around the intelligence inherent in the technology as from hands-on problems in implementation. New applications, however, now make such reconfiguration feasible. It works—and the benefits are huge.
Rebalancing human and machine intelligence can, for example, more than double clerical productivity, as well as liberate front-line employees to serve customers, rather than perform administrative tasks. And it can cut employee learning cycles...