InformationWeek

Finding The Biggest

Issue date: Sept. 9, 1996

It's one of the most frequently asked questions about the InformationWeek 500: "How can my company get on the list?" Another is, "Why isn't my company ranked higher?" To provide some answers, here's a quick description of how the list was compiled.

Our ranking of the biggest corporate users of information technology in the United States is based on a detailed survey conducted exclusively for InformationWeek by Computer Intelligence in La Jolla, Calif.

CI's researchers survey each site within an organization by conduc ting a series of telephone interviews to determine the site's use of technology. For example, assume Gee Whiz Corp. has 55 IT-using sites. CI would call each of the sites to determine its installed and planned computer and communications gear.

To ensure that the information it collects is accurate, CI interviews the appropriate managers for each technology category. For instance, CI talks to LAN managers about networks, PC administrators about desktop computers, and data-center managers about mainframes.

Once CI researchers have located the appropriate manager, they ask him or her about the company's use of PCs, workstations, servers, mainframes, peripheral devices, software, local and wide area networks, and telecommunications. On average, CI collects 300 to 400 data elements for each site, according to Harry Henry, director of the CI survey.

Next comes the process of assigning a score to each company. CI assigns values based on a company's number of users and the types of products it uses. For e xample, a site running a LAN with 500 users would receive a higher score than a site whose LAN has just 100 users. Similarly, a site with multiple LANs would receive a higher score than a site with just one. Likewise, a Pentium PC earns a higher score than a 386 machine.

CI also grades higher for what it considers "leading technology," as determined by its analysts, according to Henry.

CI comes up with a total score for each site by adding up the scores for the site's total IT inventory. Finally, CI combines the scores of a company's various sites to produce a grand total for the entire organization. This total, indicated in the "CII Index" column in our charts, determines the organization's position on the IW 500 list. The higher the total score, the higher a company's rank.

Does your company qualify for the IW 500? The best way to find out is to call Computer Intelligence at 619-450-1667 and have them add your organization to its list of firms to survey.

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