The Nine-Letter Word

  Business Intelligence   Strategy  

I was recently reading CIO Magazine's article on its IT best practices for 2003. It was quite an interesting article because it was a testament to what IT values in IT. As I progressed, one trend was strikingly common: the value that the selection committee placed around integration.

The article gave kudos to companies that indulged in application integration, data integration and infrastructure integration. More importantly, each case study demonstrated the hard and soft business savings that were generated through integration. While the hard savings gains were tied strictly to headcount savings, infrastructure savings and software savings driven through consolidation, the soft savings illustrated dramatic improvements in efficiency, productivity and value generated through having consistent information and tools in one place.

Even though the value proposition of integration is clearly present, most organizations struggle with actually undertaking integration projects. Perhaps many companies have difficulty with the lack of glitz and glamour in integration activities, or the level of executive stewardship that is required to drive these projects, or are frightened away by sticker shock. Yes, it's true that the costs are high, the glitz is low and the executive sponsorship is huge. But the long-term payoff of integration is also tremendous. So let your…

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