Managers need advice on IT

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Senior managers in firms need help with their IT decisions if their businesses are going to benefit in the information age, says a new book on IT Management, “Tricks of the Trade”. According to its author, Guy Dresser,  senior managers are not making the best use of information technology because of their lack of IT knowledge, expertise and skills. They do not understand precisely what it is they need, so they are not making the best IT investment.

“Consultants and software get blamed for the problems because the people responsible for IT – the financial directors – do not know their IT market,” said Dresser. Continue reading →

Accountants and consultancy: too close for comfort?

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There was a time when company directors went to management consultancies for help with the intricacies of systems selection and implementation because they offered an independent service and were not tied to any particular vendor. Nowadays that has all changed.

At the corporate level there can be few major management consultancies, or even systems integrators, for that matter, who have not leapt into bed with the enterprise system developers such as SAP, Oracle, PeopleSoft, Baan and others. Continue reading →

Control is the key to preventing IT disasters

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Reports of information systems projects going belly-up have become all too common in recent years. The biggest failures are household names: the London Stock Exchange, the London Ambulance Service and Wessex Regional Health Authority to name just three.

Yet for every big-name cock-up, there are many dozens of small projects that do not work out as their sponsors intended. According to Arthur Andersen partner Paul Williams, the chief reason for this is poor project management. Continue reading →