• silicon.com
• Management
• CIO Insights

By Suzanna Kerridge, 11 June 2001 16:30

NEWS Most company directors are refusing to listen to their IT chiefs when it comes to ecommerce strategies - and four out of ten fail to believe anything their CIOs tell them. Bob Weiler, CEO and president of the Giga Information Group, gave that stark message at the Giga World IT Forum in Rome today, claiming that IT's problem is one of credibility. CIOs still have an image problem to overcome in the boardroom, with the recent economic slowdown making it harder to convince senior management of the importance of an internet strategy. He claimed CIOs continue to struggle to be seen as an integral part of the business decision making process. Jean Phillippe Courtois, president of Microsoft EMEA, agreed: "Many companies still do not see CIOs as a strategic role within the company and the vast majority of European CIOs are not on the board." The best way to gain the confidence of the board, he explained, was to start with a project with a short ROI (return on investment) cycle. "If you start with a small project then if you screw up it's not that bad. Europe still has the mentality that committing a mistake is terrible. Even so, we still embark on big three- to four-year projects which our company's don't need." Inflexibility within IT departments is also holding companies back. As many as 70 per cent of applications need to be replaced within a two-year period but organisations do not have the resources to cater for this need, said Paul de Ligny Boudreau, chief research officer at Giga. "Organisations must rethink their own structures and processes. We no longer have the luxury of developing applications that last for decades and the impact on business could be devastating if companies do not evolve their internet strategies over time." The slowdown of the US economy was also blamed for making European organisations more cautious about investing in the net. This is a mistake, as there is still much value to be gained from an internet strategy even if it is just a case of putting company human resource forms on an intranet, claimed Microsoft's Courtois. "We are still optimistic in Europe and I believe the economy is in good shape. GDP is still growing at around three per cent and even though moving towards a single currency is a headache, the economy is not that bad. We are not seeing big reductions in IT budgets - we just see more focus on the business sense of a project to ensure the investment is justified."