The Digital Organization

"Contributing to the misalignment phenomenon are technology leaders who do not understand business."

"Direct your customized solutions to areas that will help you dominate your industry."

"A digital organization seamlessly communicates between employees, sites, business units, applications, customers, and suppliers with systems that empower processes and strengthen decision making."

"New computer technology abounds. Don't squander resources trying to sort out the eventual winners because most bright ideas never survive the harsh world of business."

"Launching network computing requires a complex refurbishing of the surrounding infrastructure, and you can't provision your organization with slick, new computer technology for free, so where do you get the money?"

"You may need to be leading edge for information technologies strategic to your business. For other things, you may wait until the early adopters bleed, recover from their wounds, explore new directions, and eventually blaze a trail for you."

"As you build your digital world, you need to connect to the outside so your intranet truly becomes part of the global Internet. You want to do this carefully because there are hooligans out here eager to cause mischief."

"Too many good strategies languish because leaders underestimate the difficulty of altering an organization's behavior."

"All the propaganda about change is meaningless unless a leader's vision sets a true course for the future."

"Building a digital organization requires selecting systems and processes that leverage your business and preserve, to the greatest extent possible, existing investment in computers."

"Knowing when, and how much, to invest in leading edge technology requires a business perspective missing from most computer decisions. You need to take a reasoned approach that balances risk with potential payback."

"You can shift your current costs to your customers if you figure out a way to lure them with convenience, savings, speed, or an increased choice of options."

"Data mining represents only one of the many proliferating technologies designed to meet the unique needs of knowledge workers."

"If an application does not change the organization and its processes, then you probably did an incomplete job."

"If you start now with a program to systematically move people between the computer functions and business areas, then you'll be ready for the day when it's possible to assemble applications from standard components."

"Take care in selecting your development tools. Make sure they generate fast applications, provide flexibility, achieve broad industry acceptance, and don't create legacy problems."

"Service providers become increasingly important as organizations rent capabilities that used to be under internal control."

"Outsourcing presents a tricky management challenge because you must negotiate the transfer, as well as the service and pricing. It also requires continuous vigilance during the contract."