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chairman's message Nick Temple
Since then, business has become increasingly dependent on the availability and reliability of IT—it underpins all the business processes and enables the whole organization to function in unison. The Internet has introduced a new dimension where customers and suppliers can directly interact with what used to be internal systems. Airline reservations, orders, and status inquiries are now regularly made directly by the customers. Outages now mean lost business that cannot be recovered. Not a week goes by without reports in the media of major disruptions in services where customers are faced with difficulties. I joined the board of Fox IT in 2001, as I saw an exciting company that was focused on improving both the management of IT and how it interacted with the main business. I discovered that Fox IT was the market leader in the UK and also regarded as the authority in implementing best practice around the world. Fox IT today provides consultancy and training to nearly all large IT and financial corporations as well as many industrial multi-nationals. From research carried out by leading universities and researchers, we know that companies that operate in the upper quartile of IT management practices get an overall 20% efficiency gain over the rest. Unfortunately there are very few companies in the upper quartile. To get there one needs to implement processes and management systems based on best practices. In conjunction the skills of the people must also be upgraded. |
I joined IBM in 1964 when data processing, as it was known then, was in its infancy. For four decades the industry was almost completely technology driven. New applications capitalized on the new technological improvements and the ever improving price-performance ratios. Little attention was given to improving the management of IT and to delivering the promised improvements in efficiency and effectiveness.
Projects became larger and more complex with the inevitable overruns in both time and costs. Company boards became increasingly frustrated as they were forced into a "catch 22" situation.
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