User group KPIs to keep SAP honest

Beverley Head
Thursday, 06 August 2009 09:29

Business IT - Technology

A clue to why spending is down came from Jeffrey Word, vice president of strategy and director of the centre for business network transformation, speaking at the User Group meeting. He said enterprises needed a two phase strategy for their IT systems in the current economic climate – first they needed to ensure the business could survive, and only then turn their attention to new systems to help it thrive once market conditions improved.

One of the greatest survival challenges he said was managing cash reserves. This was still hard for many companies in spite of the data systems they had in place, with Word citing research which found four out of five companies could not forecast their mid quarter cash levels to within 5 percent accuracy.

Helping to manage cash was the number one priority for CIOs in the current market according to Word, along with the need to drive operational efficiency and analyse corporate data to identify and mitigate risk.

When the turnaround came, CIOs needed to ensure they were in a position to then help their companies thrive by establishing systems to deliver superior customer value, retain and enable top employees and deliver credible sustainability.

But first IT shops had to gaze at their own navels and make sure they were in good shape.  As Word warned; “If your business isn’t the best run in the company then you’re not going to have the credibility to tell the business what to do.”