Business needs to take greater responsibility for technology investment as billions of dollars are wasted on ill-conceived IT projects each year, says John Thorp, head of Fujitsu’s global consulting centre for strategic leadership.
Pointing the finger at companies for having “a serious addiction to gambling on IT investments”, Thorp says a huge amount of money is spent on IT that is creating no value.
“The minute you put IT in front of something, it’s an IT problem. IT strategy, IT governance. It’s not about IT, it’s about enterprise value,” he says.
“This is what governance is all about, but it has to be led from the boardroom.”
Governance, he says, is like steering a ship and this involves plotting a course and staying on course.
“Now when we go off course in the business world we say it will be okay, we’ll get back on track. Hope is not a method. How do you get 880 degrees off course? One degree at a time,” he says.
“When we hear about $500 million IT investments that have gone nowhere. Don’t you think there was some indication earlier that there was a problem? Why didn’t we do anything about it? It is important to manage the journey.”
”I’m not naive enough to think that it isn’t damn hard, but I’m idealistic enough to think it’s worth doing,” he says.