Improving existing business processes in order to maximise resources
will be the single most important challenge for IT directors in the next two years, according to
analyst firm Gartner Consulting.
The advice follows a Gartner/BT survey of 250 UK-based senior executives which estimated that
companies that make better use of their technology and employees will help to contribute to a
£4.3bn increase in annual profits.
Improving processes - business agility - will bring substantial savings and heavily influence
future strategies and spending priorities of UK organisations, the survey found.
Greater
business agility, which Gartner defined as "the ability to demonstrate flexible, efficient and
swift responses to changing circumstances by maximising physical and human resources", would result
in a 4.8% increase in workforce productivity, the survey estimated. This is equivalent to an
addition of £20bn to last year's gross domestic product or a £4.3bn contribution to profit.
About 90% of respondent firms, which were drawn from nine industry sectors, said increasing their
organisation's agility was a top organisational change initiative, with 84% seeing their ability to
respond swiftly to changing market conditions as "vital" to future success.
Organisations have to be flexible enough to meet customer, supplier, organisational and
macro-economic challenges, said Chris Boyd, director at Gartner Consulting. "Perhaps the single
most important challenge for the IT director over the next two years will be to identify the agenda
for agility and create preparedness within their organisations to face threats and exploit the
opportunities this period of technology-driven turbulence brings," he said.
Boyd identified EasyJet, Tesco and Cisco as prime examples of agile companies. Tesco's e-commerce
operation demonstrates informational agility in how it uses data from the supermarket's loyalty
card to present past purchases to online shoppers.
"Tesco shows flexibility in the way it uses customer relationship management technology, improving
the e-commerce channel and responding to customer needs," Boyd said.
The first step for companies looking to increase their agility is to assess their current
situation, Boyd said. "You have to understand where you are now and also where your peers are in
terms of agility," he said. "Encouragingly, the survey showed there is a strength of commitment to
achieving greater agility."
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