The Triumph of Technology

Avoiding the nightmares of implementation
Just as marketing is too important to be left to the marketing department, technology is too important to be left to IT. But whilst some progress is being made in bringing marketing perspectives into operations, and operational perspectives into marketing, technology is still seen as the province of geeks and techies – although, if you bother to look, you will actually find very few people deserving those labels in IT departments these days anyway.
If you want another anthology of articles on the latest searing white-hot technological advances, then this theme section is not for you. For our thesis is not that the industry – and, let’s not forget, its customers – needs more technology, but rather the focus should be on better implementation.
It is important to recognize, for example, that IT is made up of information as well as technology. The latter may have improved vastly since line impact printers were used in the 1970s to produce bank statements with all the style and finesse of John Bull printing kits, but Robert Mighall argues persuasively that too little attention is paid to the forethought and design that makes the difference between a system that merely works and one that delivers.
The ultimate sign of successful technology is that we no longer regard it as technology. Telephones and even PCs are now just as much part of everyday life as the ball-point pen – which was hi-tech to my parents’ generation. But, for many, programming video recorders and even txtmsgng remains baffling. And, as Lucia Dore explains, companies often remain baffled – or at least frustrated – by their IT systems, not least because they are not yet addressing the issue of collaboration.
To read the full article, please download the PDF above.