Critical.
Authoritative.
Strategic.
Subscribe to CIO Magazine »

The Engine That Drives Success

Page:

The best companies have the best business models because they have the best IT strategies.

Nicholas Carr is once again grabbing centre stage now that his new book, Does IT Matter? is hitting the bookstores. The book is essentially an expanded version of his provocative Harvard Business Review article in which he argues that IT has become a commodity - necessary for competitiveness but insufficient for advantage.

Carr argues that, in the past, companies such as American Airlines, FedEx and American Hospital Supply built their own proprietary systems to differentiate their offerings or lock in customers. Now that IT has become a commodity - a pervasive infrastructure - any company has access and any system can be instantly replicated. And therefore, he argues, any competitive advantage goes out the window.

Trouble is, his newly improved argument, like his original paper, is fundamentally wrong. Companies that heed his advice - don't spend; follow, don't lead - are doomed to mediocrity or worse.

To begin, his core thesis is not supported by facts. There were no halcyon days of proprietary IT competitiveness as he describes. I've been advising companies since 1975, and looking back, I can testify that there were only a handful of stories that demonstrated how companies used IT to radically change their business models. Rather, in the era of data processing, companies used IT for mundane purposes - to automate old business processes like accounting and HR. Systems targeted at competitiveness were rare, very expensive and took years to build. Proprietary systems benefited vendors more than users, as companies were locked into their computer vendors. Software was not portable, and vendors made gross margins of more than 80 percent on hardware.

Successes like American, FedEx and American Hospital Supply are legendary precisely because they were so rare. For every success story where companies used IT to compete, there were countless failures. At nearly all companies, IT mattered lots, but not to achieve competitive advantage. Carr's rewrite of history makes for a good read - but only if you enjoy fiction.

Today the positive examples are actually much more plentiful. Even when it comes to dotcoms and Internet pureplays, many early innovators are competing well today, which undermines Carr's assertion that "the technology cycle works against pioneers". For sure, the early Internet companies with bad business models failed. Yet, household names like Amazon.com, Ameritrade, CheckFree, DoubleClick, eBay, E-Trade, Google, Salesforce.com, University of Phoenix Online, Yahoo and even Priceline - to name a few - have highly distinguished business models and are growing rapidly in revenue and earnings.

More important, Amazon.com, Best Buy, Tesco and Wal-Mart dominate their respective retail markets - enabled by superior IT, customer relationships, business designs, differentiated offerings and other benefits.

The same is true for many other industry competition leaders: banking (Citigroup), consumer credit (American Express), consumer food products (PepsiCo), household (Procter & Gamble and Colgate-Palmolive), furniture (Herman Miller), communications technology (Cisco), property insurance (Progressive Casualty Insurance), metals (Alcoa) and hotels (Marriott). Of Fortune's recent top 10 most admired companies, eight are well-known for their superior use of IT in supporting a unique business strategy - Dell, FedEx, GE, IBM, Microsoft, Southwest Airlines, Starbucks and Wal-Mart.

Page:

Join the CIO Australia group on LinkedIn. The group is open to CIOs, IT Directors, COOs, CTOs and senior IT managers.

More about: Alcoa, Amazon.com, American Airlines, American Express, Ameritrade, CheckFree, Cisco, CitiGroup, Colgate-Palmolive, Dell, DoCoMo, DoubleClick, eBay, FedEx, Google, Herman Miller, HIS Limited, IBM, Microsoft, New Paradigm Learning, Oracle, Paradigm, PeopleSoft, PepsiCo, Phoenix, Procter & Gamble, Salesforce.com, SAP, Southwest Airlines, Speed, Starbucks, Tesco, Tonic, Wal-Mart, Yahoo

Comments

Post new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
Users posting comments agree to the CIO comments policy.
Login or register to link comments to your user profile, or you may also post a comment without being logged in.
Related Whitepapers
Latest Stories
Community Comments
Latest Blog Posts
Whitepapers
  • 10 Essential Steps to Email Security
    Modern business is reliant on email. All organisations using email need to answer the following questions: How do we control spam volumes without the risk of trapping a business email? How do we prevent infections from email-borne viruses? How do we stop leakage of confidential information? Can we detect and stop exploitation from phishing attacks? How do we control brand damage from occurring due to employee misuse? How do we prevent inappropriate content from being circulated?
    Learn more »
  • Delivering Tomorrow's Backup and Recovery Infrastructure
    The data protection market has changed considerably over the past decade. During this time, the market witnessed a fundamental shift away from relying solely on tape for backup and recovery to using disk-based backup solutions to address challenges including backup performance, reliability, and recovery time objectives. This paper highlights that firms evaluating next-generation data protection solutions must expect a greater degree of integration between the technology components in today's data protection path.
    Learn more »
  • Using Application Control to Reduce Risk with Endpoint Security
    Unwanted applications, like games, result in productivity loss. This is often the primary consideration when applying application control. But unauthorized applications also increase your company’s risks of malware infection and data loss. This paper details how endpoint security solutions that incorporate application control provide the most efficient, comprehensive defense against unauthorized applications.
    Learn more »
All whitepapers
rhs_login_lockGet exclusive access to Invitation only events CIO, reports & analysis.
Recent comments