Choosing The Best

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Choosing The Best

Who are the best, most productive corporate users of information technology in the United States? To answer that question, InformationWeek and MIT used data from two surveys conducted over the past three months.

One study was directed at human resources managers, the other at top IT executives at each of the nation's 500 biggest users of IT as determined by Computer Intelligence (see story, p. 46).

The HR survey, conducted by Atlantic Marketing Research Co. in Boston, asked HR managers about issues such as employee work habits and salaries, management strategies, the effects of IT on workflow and productivity, and changes in the workplace.

The IT survey was conducted by Advantage Business Research Inc. in Lake Success, N.Y. This survey asked CIOs about their IS budgets, staff size, and involvement with activities such as outsourcing, business reengineering, client-server computing, and the Internet. MIT researchers then used the data from the surveys, as well as information on company productivity from Standard & Poor's Compustat stock information service, to rank the most productive users of IT in each of 20 industries.

The rankings compare companies with others in their own industry, not with those in other industries. Only public companies with complete productivity data on Compustat were included in the analysis. This restricted the sample to 360 of the possible 500. The leaders from each industry are listed in the chart below.

Industry
Aerospace/Engineering
Banking
Chemicals
Computers
Consumer Products
Electronics
Energy
Financial Services
Food Processing
Health Care
Insurance
Manufacturing
Media
Metals/Natural Resources
Pharmaceuticals
Professional Services
Retail
Telecommunications
Transportation
Utilities

Company
Textron Inc.
Norwest Corp.
DuPont Co.
IBM
Levi Strauss & Co.
Emerson Electric Co.
WMX Technologies Inc.
Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc.
Philip Morris Cos. Inc.
Cardinal Health Inc.
American International Group
General Electric Co.
Capital Cities/ABC Inc.
Georgia Pacific Corp.
Merck & Co. Inc.
Service Master Co. LP
Aramark Corp.
GTE Corp.
United Parcel Service
Southern Co.

Return to " The Biggest And The Best " or " The Customer Counts "

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