IT budgets will remain flat next year according to a survey from
AMR Research and IT executives must be able to wed their
applications to business processes and demonstrate their value,
according to speakers at AMR Research's executive conference.
"Even in this sluggish economy, we are witnessing a structural
change in the way companies purchase enterprise applications," AMR
president and chief executive officer Tony Friscia said.
"While the previous technology boom was driven by spending
allocated to IT departments, the next wave of 'must-have'
applications will need to deliver demonstrable value to be driven
by business executives. Leading software companies are investing to
build those applications now so that they will be ready to deliver
when purse strings loosen," said Friscia.
AMR also released its quarterly survey of 100 IT and business
executives, which was conducted in October.
Among the results was the finding that IT budgets will remain flat
in 2003. In addition, 39% of the respondents said integration is
their top priority IT investment for 2003, 37% said data
warehousing is their number one goal, and 31% said they will focus
first on physical infrastructure.
Companies will still have to invest in new technology to gain
performance increases. Those increases could result from creating
demand visibility, knowing the profitability of customers and
orders and getting new products to market faster.
But to make those initiatives work, according to AMR analyst Bruce
Richardson, users must establish sound business practices that mesh
well with applications, and they must populate their systems with
clean data. They will also have to get a solid mandate from chief
executive officers if they are to succeed.
"It's simple, but it's a way of rethinking the world of business,"
said Richardson.