Top business targets in today's companies are often contradicting one another, for example:
The CEO: Focus on "Growth and revenue"
The CFO: Focus on "Cost efficiency"
Daily operations at a company are affected by a wide range of issues, which have an impact on both internal and external processes and the supporting IT systems.
Globalization & the Internet
- Accelerating economic cycles and shorter time frames.
- Increasing competition, often by new players with new business models.
- Mergers and acquisitions.
- Push for information transparency.
- Regulatory requirements.
- Corporate and personal security issues.
Business Integration solutions are implemented from different internal and external process needs and opportunities.
Collaboration
Companies of today are more and more looking into issues like eBusiness, eProcurement, partner and supply chain integration. Collaboration with partners, suppliers and customers is a vital part of the competitive advantage today. Tomorrow it will be indispensable. Visionary companies are already there - today.
Merger and acquisitions
Big companies gets bigger through mergers and acquisitions. It results in "mixed IT-infrastructures". The enterprise information sharing between companies in a group becomes essential for the management. IT must support the business.
"Webbifing" legacy applications
Web fronts and portal solutions become more and more common. Old environments need to be tied together with the latest architecture to support self-service concepts - often with real time data access.
IT to bring business value
Improved use of existing IT infrastructure, increased efficiency, reduced costs, real time information and better decision making are becoming commonly used expressions inside enterprises guided by foresight. The companies that act on these issues are the potential market leaders. As a result of Internet usage and more efficient ways of sharing information, shorter lead times become crucial. "Short time to market" is a must.