ERP Newsletter
 
NEWSLETTERS
 

CIO.com updates, insights and advice on technology, management and your career.

 
 
 
LEADERSHIP
 
CIO Executive Programs
The Leader in Face-to-Face Education for Senior Executives

Offering regional and national programs, CIO (and CSO) events bring together some of the most respected names and thought leaders in information technology and security. Presented by CIOs and other senior level executives, these invitation-only programs offer timely topics and strong networking. Learn More »

 
CIO Executive Council
A Peer-Advisory Service and Professional Association for CIOs

Turn Geeks into Leaders

June 17, 11:30 AM - 12:30 PM U.S./ET (GMT-4)

Larry Bonfante, CIO of the U.S. Tennis Association, will discuss the skills and approaches that your rising IT leaders must learn to be effective in an executive capacity.

How to Handle Your New CEO: Managing Turnover at the Top

June 18, 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM U.S./Eastern (GMT-4)

Turbulent times have increased turnover at the top. Find out what Council CIOs have done to "break in" new CEOs—build relationships, set expectations, educate on the role of IT.

Mid-Market CIO Panel: Tips and Techniques for Improving Vendor Relationships

July 15, 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM U.S./Eastern (GMT-4)

We'll highlight relationship priorities and best practices identified in a Council study, and we'll interact with a CIO panel on the approaches they've used to improve strategic vendor partnerships.

Executive Competencies Assessment Tool

Assess Your Business Leadership Skills with the Council's new benchmarking tool. Rate yourself in change leadership, strategy, customer focus and more.

More / Register »

Learn more about the CIO Executive Council »



 
 
RESOURCE CENTER
 
 
 
SUBSCRIBE TO CIO
 
Are you involved in setting the direction for your company's IT budget or strategy?

Apply today for a FREE subscription to CIO Magazine!

 
 

Michael Schrage on the Importance of Implementation

THERE’S NO SHORTAGE OF BRILLIANT IDEAS IN IT. To the contrary, we enjoy an embarrassment of riches. Ever faster, better ...

 

September 01, 2002CIO

THERE’S NO SHORTAGE OF BRILLIANT IDEAS IN IT. To the contrary, we enjoy an embarrassment of riches. Ever faster, better and cheaper technology creates ever faster, better and cheaper choices for both CIOs and the enterprise. Even in the grip of a capital expenditures slowdown, we still have more innovative opportunities than we know what to do with. That’s the good news about this business.

The bad news? Good ideas are easy; good implementations are hard. Very hard. But ongoing IT innovation is meaningless without ongoing implementation. We can publicly discuss the pros and cons of CRM, SCM, alignment and security till our tongues get tired, but the immutable business fact remains: The quality of ideas ultimately depends on the quality of their implementation. Just as actions speak louder than words, our implementations say far more about us than our plans. We are what we execute.

So this column begins with a simple premise: The future of IT is the future of implementation; the future of implementation is the future of IT. That means implementations increasingly need to be as creative and inspiring as the ideas that supposedly drive them.

Implementations built around slavish conformance to unchanging specs almost always fail. Implementation isn’t about following orders on time and on budget; it’s about getting things to work on time and on budget.

Anything CIOs can do to gain keener insight into how individuals and institutions translate ideas into actions?and actions into ideas?is worth the investment. Why? Because, in the real world, return on investment is contingent on return on implementation.The problem is that we overvalue good ideas and undervalue their execution. We honestly believe that if we define the problem?and the specs?just right, that implementation becomes straightforward. It almost never is. Anyone bothering to read this column has probably lived through an implementation or a rollout where they discovered that the very act of implementation changes the nature of the original problem and the spec. You discover what the clients really want when they interact with a prototype, or how suppliers really respond to that just-in-time scheduling system. As German Gen. Helmuth von Moltke once observed, "All plans evaporate on contact with the enemy."

What many executives don’t realize is that implementation is all about exploration and discovery. Unfortunately, too many of us treat implementation as a necessary evil that obscures the brilliance of our strategic IT concepts. Implementation is what gets delegated?or outsourced?to project managers and consultants who get paid to handle the dirty work.

 
 
Loading...
 
WHITE PAPERS

6 Ways A Unified Collaboration System Reduces IT Costs

Learn 6 ways that Oracle Beehive, the only unified collaboration system built for the enterprise, can reduce your hard dollar costs, boost information worker productivity and extend the value of your existing IT investments.
 

An Infrastructure And Operations Analysis

This Forrester Research report explains how new cloud and hybrid deployment models can help enterprises cope with the infrastructure challenges created by growing email systems.
 

Investing in Business Analytics Technology

Find the answers to your questions about business anyalytics initiatives.
 

Don't Sacrifice Speed

Learn how to ensure custom content is obtained in a fast manner and doesn't drive your customers away.
 

Virtualization: Unparalleled Agility

VMware joined BMC Software to co-author 7 must-read tips for striking the perfect balance in your virtual environment.
 

Effective Service Management Eases the Virtualization Transition

Virtualization adds a whole new level of complexity to the IT infrastructure.
 

WEBCASTS

Intellectual Property Management - Key to Innovation, Productivity, Success

Intellectual property accounts for up to 75% of the value of Fortune 500 companies. Organizations with a solid stra...
 

Enterprise Collaboration - Gold Mine or Money Pit?

The "Collaboration Convergence" taking place in today's enterprise is creating high stakes opportunities and seriou...
 

How to Achieve Storage Cost-Cutting Goals While Driving Business Innovation

Drive Business Innovation
 

IT Consolidation Made Easy

The Primary IT Initiative for Reducing Costs
 

Webcast with Dan Vesset: Investing in Business Analytics Technology

What exactly is business analytics and why should you care? Dan Vesset of IDC and Gaurav Verma of SAS answer this a...
 

Capitalize on Your SAP Content

After 18 years of partnership and over 3,000 successful customer deployments, Open Text has become SAP's premier pa...
 

Resource Alerts

Get instant email notifications by topic when white papers, webcasts, and case studies are added to our library.

 
FEATURED SPONSORS
 
 
 
SPONSORED LINKS
 

The Global Marketplace Today: Strategies for Tough Times

Why Data Loss is Increasing--and What You Can Do About It

Learn how to managing client systems in the enterprise.

Build a High-Performance Open Web Platform

How Interactive Viewer Reduces the Effort to Meet Visualization Requirements

Top-line Performance that's Bottom-line Efficient

Learn how a virtualized enterprise can help your company reduce costs

Why Isn't Server Virtualization Saving Us More?

Top 10 Business and IT Drivers for the Wealth Management Sector

8 Key Ingredients to Building an Internal Cloud

BPM: Leveraging Competencies and Streamlining Processes to Achieve Operational Excellence

White Paper: The Building Blocks for Cloud Computing

Craft a Strategy to Lower Your Total Cost of Ownership

A Natural User Interface for Enterprise Applications

Delivering Secure and Reliable Data through Spreadsheet Automation

Financial Institutions Need Rich Internet Applicatons

"Enterprise-Proven" is the Prerequisite for Enterprise SaaS Portal Solutions

Accenture IT Consulting: Enabling high performance. More...

Top Five CIO Challenges

Insight makes it easy to spend your Microsoft subsidy check.

Five minute business analytics assessment. Immediate results.

Dangerous Collaboration Practices: 5 Ways IT Can Minimize Risk

Accenture: Outsourcing for uncertain times. Click to learn more.

The Case for Investing in Business Analytics Technology. Read white paper.

Live Webinar: Applying Business Analytics. Click here to learn more

Taking the Service Desk to the Next Level

Communications and Collaboration Needs at Business Organizations

Using Open Source to Deploy Web Applications

Secondary Market Primer: Your Network at Half Price

Losing Ground: 2009 TMT Global Security Survey

Stop Application Fraud at the Source with Device Reputation

Building the Virtualized Enterprise with VMware Infrastructure

Learn how to save 30% through project & portfolio management.

5 Steps to Automating Accounts Payable

BPM Survey Results: The Real-World Analysis

Ready to Act: 3 Recommendations for Agile Processes

Achieving Business Agility with Application Grid

Next Generation Enterprise Applications

Achieving Pervasive Performance Management

Smart Decisions: The Role of Key Performance Indicators

The Link Between Effective Online Business Banking and Web 2.0

Introducing the new HP ProLiant G6 server family

Accenture: Outsourcing for Competitive Advantage. More...

Better spam protection with Postini for just $1/user/mo

Introducing the new HP ProLiant G6 server family

infoBOOM! - The Mid-Sized Company CIO's Exclusive Community

Accenture IT Consulting: Logical meets technological. More . . .

The Fraudster Economy Model: Operating a Business in the Underground

Trade in your old laser printer and get up to $1000 back!

Seven Ways ITIL Can Help You in an Economic Downturn