InformationWeek
Defining The Business Value Of Technology
September 14, 1998
Defining IT Innovation
continued...page 4 of 5
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Where do the most effective ideas for innovative IT process improvements originate inside
companies? Three of 10 respondents say it's with senior IS management, 25% say business line
management, 21% say IT or business-project leaders, and 8% cite CEOs or other top
management.
Sources Of Innovation
Still, many IT executives say they're getting more input than ever from business managers and
users on creative ways to use technology. "Innovation is coming from the dialog between
business and IT," says Yannick Le Coudic, VP of MIS at Lubrizol Corp. in Wickliffe, Ohio.
The $1.7 billion chemicals company implemented a new ERP project, an intranet for product development and marketing, largely because of requests from business managers. "The business people more than ever are coming to us with their needs," Le Coudic says. "They're much more aware of the possibilities technology brings."
Top IT executives shouldn't assume that marketing, sales, and other business executives will
always know about the latest and greatest in IT, says David Billings, senior VP of information
and technology systems at Airborne Express, the shipping unit of $2.9 billion Airborne Freight
Corp. in Seattle. "If we're doing our jobs properly in IT, we're making people on the business side
aware of some of the possibilities," Billings says.
Nonetheless, the actual impetus for moving ahead with a project comes from the business side, he says. "They make the demands," Billings says. "We have to provide adequate supply and make the decisions on which projects should go ahead and which get deferred."
Airborne is rolling out Call Center Automation, a major upgrade of its 10 customer-service call centers. The project will integrate voice-response units, local servers and workstations, and mainframes to provide a graphical customer-service application that will ease the process of locating packages and placing orders. The company is also using digital imaging to speed its handling of domestic airbills and to cut costs.
Some IT executives say they need to rely on the entire company for good ideas on how best to use
information and knowledge. "Everyone is being challenged to stay innovative, so the ideas have to
come from everyone within the organization, not just IT," says Hilton's Durocher. "The
organization has to be set up so that communication of ideas is easy."
Top Hilton projects include combining data warehousing with a central-reservation system to
give reservation clerks access to historical data when booking rooms for customers; smart-card
technology to ease check-ins; and Web sites for online bookings.
continued...page 5
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