Payback Time
Adaptec is deriving considerable payback. The procurement time for semiconductors, from purchase order to delivery, has been reduced to 55 days from 105. Marciel estimates that the new supply-chain system has already saved the company $2 million by eliminating manual processes.

"To grow, you have to push those technology buttons," Marciel says. "We've become very aggressive about adopting new enabling technologies. In this business, you're either fast or you're forgotten."

The quest to become more competitive is prompting sophisticated technology adoption even within traditionally low-tech organizations. Foster Parents Plan, a group in Toronto that matches sponsors with needy children in developing countries, competes for donations with more than 75,000 registered charities in Canada--and that number grows by about 5,000 every year. A year and a half ago, Foster Parents began to implement a data warehouse and business-intelligence software. "As competition for dollars grows, it's becoming more important that we understand our markets and how we respond," says CIO Kevin Cantafio.

The 60-year-old charity runs its core operations on AS/400 systems that employees access with basic terminals. IT dollars are limited: 83 cents of every dollar raised goes toward field programs.

But Foster Parents decided it had to carve out enough from its budget to build a data warehouse, which runs on a SQL Server 7.0 system and pulls data from the AS/400 applications. The system lets Foster Parents study the donation patterns of long-term sponsors.

Using business-intelligence tools from Cognos Inc., the charity discovered that potential sponsors who learn about Foster Parents through TV advertisements needed more information before committing to sponsorship than those contacted via direct mail and print campaigns. So Foster Parents put together information packets for prospective sponsors who call in after watching a commercial.

Start At The Top
Changing attitudes among senior managers are a major catalyst among companies becoming more open to leading-edge technologies. They were a factor cited by 43% of technology leaders in the InformationWeek Research study.

At Colgate-Palmolive Co., leading-edge IT has won more acceptance among senior management as it has become easier to demonstrate the benefits and productivity gains that go with it, says Ed Toben, VP of global IT. The maker of consumer goods deployed SAP's R/3 enterprise resource planning software in 1993. The ERP system helped Colgate-Palmolive reduce its finished goods inventory by 50% and cut order receipt-to-delivery time for its top 50 customers to five days from 12.

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