No killer app. The new IT strategy is a synthetic strategy that draws on multiple technologies and management approaches, not just one. The company that’s excellent at IT strategy today must excel at ERP in the back office, CRM and e-commerce in the front office, as well as data warehousing, mining and KM. Virtually every key process--internal and interorganizational--has to be reengineered through IT. Cisco was one of the first to successfully connect its ERP system with the Internet and has since added substantial CRM capabilities for customer service and an extensive portal for internal and customer-oriented knowledge management. Even with its lead, the company never rests: It recently went through another round of reengineering key processes to make better use of available technology.

It’s the information, stupid. Smart IT executives are really smart information executives. They know that all the IT in the world is useless unless it facilitates people using information to make better decisions or take actions that are in the interests of customers. The Earthgrains Co., a company that turned itself around with the help of a new ERP system, really prospered on the basis of the philosophy of Division President Bill Opdyke: "In God we trust; all others bring data."

Of course, it’s still important to come up with a great strategy. But for many of these companies, the high-level strategic intent is fairly obvious. What’s important is a smooth conceptual flow among the intent, the company’s business model, the information it needs to pull it off and the technologies that generate the needed information. Once the concepts are in place, the long-term work of implementing a great IT-enabled strategy can begin.