High-performance business

Create value with technology

Avoiding the austerity trap
By Bob Suh

In today's uncertain business climate, IT investment is often in the budgetary crosshairs. But in fact, now is the ideal time to upgrade existing infrastructure and invest in next-stage technologies that create value.
Management decision making can be fairly straightforward when the economy is clearly headed in one direction or the other. When it is growing, business leaders invest to meet demand. When it is shrinking, they cut costs to meet quarterly earnings expectations. But what do executives do when the economy has bottomed out and growth is somewhere on the horizon but not yet robust? When the obvious cuts have been made and pricing power is a distant memory, how do companies continue delivering shareholder value while they wait for vigorous growth to kick in? What will it take to achieve high performance in these uncertain times?
Outlook 2004, Number 1 55

And speaking of costs, what role does a capital-intensive function like information technology play in this quest for high performance? Many business leaders are understandably wary of IT investments. Although spending on information technology has increased substantially in the past 10 years, many technology projects have been characterized by sketchy metrics, long cycle times to new products and unpredictable results. No wonder many executives have come to regard IT investments as a necessary evil and information technology as something to be managed and purchased like any other commodity or utility. Accenture holds a broader, decidedly more positive view. We believe that technology investment is vital to driving future productivity and growth—hence, it is critical to achieving high performance. And this investment can, in fact, be managed with discipline and rigor, which leads to increasing