Today I joined IT Toolbox.com which is a community where professionals interested in IT connect and communicate to share knowledge. Browsing the interesting blog posts and articles, I found one very tempting to download and read:

IT excellence: Achieving optimised business outcomes -an Economist Intelligence Unit report, sponsored by SAP.

The article focuses on how leading companies enable IT to perform optimally.

Ms Mulders believes that IT excellence connotes different things to different companies. “You have to start with ‘What are we trying to do as a corporation?’” she says. Since Dow Corning is “focused very heavily on customer relationships,” she says, for her company IT excellence means “that IT and the businesses are marching to the same priorities and initiatives—that IT is partnering with the businesses to deliver value for our customers.” IT excellence simply means achieving the right balance between IT value and IT cost.

According to Applied Materials CIO Ron Kifer, the firm’s investments in IT are enabling business strategies and creating differentiation. “Our leadership is committed to the idea that IT is vital to business strategy,” says Mr Kifer. “But IT excellence is also very important.” At his company, he says, that means more than merely enabling business strategies—it also means “taking a leadership role” in business and process improvement, if not transformation.

Outsourcing

Using an outsourcing approach for enabling business is beneficial because it allows for a more flexible and cost-effective staffing model that can adjust rapidly to changes in the business environment. Outsourcing frees internalresources to focus on value-added core competencies such as change leadership, process optimisation and technology innovation.

What other interesting stuffs I’ve learnt so far concerning strategic use of IT is that

Today’s Chief Information Officer (CIO) must understand technology well, speak the language of senoir management, and involve their personnel in finding innovative ways of using IT to efficiently and swiftly deploying new business ideas.