IT could help work sharing and productivity more

the results of a recent survey of chief information officers (CIOs) and chief executive officers (CEOs) at leading infrastructure firms on the state of information technology (IT) have been released.

Farkas Berkowitz and Bentley Systems conducted this survey, and the findings were announced and discussed at the Seventh Annual Harnessing Information Technology Workshop held in Washington DC, sponsored by Farkas Berkowitz and Bentley.

The CIOs and CEOs agreed that while IT at infrastructure firms is already making an important contribution to strategy and operations, there are several areas in which it could have an even greater impact, including:.

* Supporting better sharing of knowledge and work across organizational and geographic boundaries.

* Supporting improvement in the productivity of client service delivery.

* Creating sources of competitive advantage in the marketplace.

Alan Farkas, managing director, Farkas Berkowitz, said, "In our online survey, we asked CIOs and CEOs questions on similar topics to determine how the perspectives of these executives align on key IT issues.

Ninety-five CIOs and 45 CEOs participated.

The CIOs and CEOs both said the top two items driving IT's agenda are the need for increased collaboration and technological change.

In addressing the latter, the CIOs made it clear that the best business model for managing and acquiring software technology is project [subscription] licensing of applications - which 74 percent said they currently prefer".

The participants in this year's Harnessing Information Technology Workshop largely agreed with many of the key survey findings.

For example, Brad Vaughan, senior vice president and CIO, Black and Veatch, said collaboration is critical to addressing today's global resource constraints.

"The power of collaboration," said Vaughan, "is its ability to provide a common environment towards the goal of delivering a common set of processes and output for clients".

This, he said, combined with robust communication networks, cooperation among all business partners, consolidation of processes and tool sets, and the establishment of common data and common business processes, enables firms to "better comprehend their businesses and acquire knowledge about their businesses that wasn't visible before".

Janerie Wheeler, vice president, Information Services Technology, Malcolm Pirnie, added "As we expand globally, one of our goals is to support asynchronous collaboration and project delivery as teams work in different time zones.

In addition, we continually work to improve productivity and project delivery services.

Our strategy here is to integrate process, systems, and people - with systems being the tangible link between business processes and people".

John McQuary, vice president, Knowledge Management and Technology Strategies, Fluor Corporation, explained that his company has been able to help drive and support record growth by not only connecting people and delivering value, but also by "having a consistent project execution platform that's scalable and provides a level of consistency across the organization's different project execution disciplines".

This, he said, allows Fluor to "move work across the business lines to take advantage of existing people resources".

As a result, teams that normally work on life sciences projects, for example, can be assigned, with very little additional training, to oil and gas projects when the need arises - all because the organization has a consistent set of IT tools and work processes.

Additional findings of the CIO/CEO survey include:.

The CIOs and CEOs said the top challenges facing today's IT departments are:.

* Keeping up with technological change - CIOs, 57 percent; CEOs, 49 percent.

* Controlling costs - CIOs, 43 percent; CEOs, 42 percent.

* Keeping up with changing client requirements - CIOs, 38 percent; CEOs, 56 percent.

* Recruiting and retaining IT staff - CIOs, 26 percent; CEOs, 20 percent.

* Maintaining good relations with operations - CIOs, 25 percent; CEOs, 20 percent.

* Keeping up with geographical expansion - CIOs, 24 percent; CEOs, 44 percent.

If extra time and money for IT were available, the CIOs and CEOs said they would spend it on:.

* Improving the sharing of knowledge and work within the company - CIOs, 64 percent; CEOs, 53 percent.

* Improving project quality and delivery - CIOs, 38 percent; CEOs, 44 percent.

* Improving productivity of staff - CIOs, 22 percent; CEOs, 22 percent.

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