Who do you believe? IT controversialist Nicholas Carr
has been back in town dampening down enthusiasm about innovative IT
creating unique competitive advantage.
As
Cliff Saran's interview with Carr makes clear, he still thinks
IT is past its sell-by date as a leading agent of commercial
change. Sure, IT is part of the critical infrastructure of the
business, agrees Carr, but that applies to everyone out there
scrapping for market share.
Get yourself some decent IT at a good price, just as you would
aim for a good deal on your electricity supplies, and get back to
the real business, he urges the hard-pressed business
executive.
So what is all this we hear from Andrea Masini of the London
Business School? "Make sure your processes remain unique, or even
poor companies will be able to catch you up by buying the same
processes off the shelf,"
he told a recent Gartner conference.
IT should be used as a tool to develop specific business-process
agility, not just a commodity service that does not help you
differentiate yourself from the herd, according to Masini.
So who's got it right? Well, even Carr acknowledged in his
Computer Weekly interview that Goldman Sachs deserved credit for
its self-built derivatives pricing system which, as long as
everyone keeps the formula secret, gives it a unique selling point
in the battle with its rivals.
Taking this example and the fact that Masini was addressing his
remarks to the financial services sector into account, are we to
conclude that City wheelers and dealers can still have their fun
with bespoke systems while the rest of us poor souls have to make
do with off-the-peg?
Let's hope not. It will be a very dull world if we all plump for
vanilla.