Top 10 CIO Priorities – Gartner Survey 2010

Gartner conducted survey of world’s top 1600 CIOs and here is what came out of it.  Top 10 priorities for CIOs were

1.       Improving business processes
2.       Reducing Enterprise Costs
3.       Increasing use of Information/Analytics
4.       Improving enterprise workforce effectiveness
5.       Attracting and retaining new customers
6.       Managing change initiatives
7.       Creating new products and services
8.       Targetting customers and markets more effectively
9.       Consolidating business operations
10.   Supporting regulation reporting and compliance

ERP Selection 101

This is perhaps one of the best lessons I learned way back in 1998.  What should end users look for while selecting ERP.

1. Vendor Viability and Vision: Number of Years in business and long-term vision of vendor for the business
2. Product Features: This is one of the first things considered, I would like to add one more dimension to it, fit between your company needs and product features
3. Cost: This should NOT include only licensing costs, but all costs like cost of implementation, hardware, upgrades, AMC, ideally 5 year costs should be taken into account
4. Flexibilility: Business change in terms of their processes and size, ERP should be flexible enough
5. Implementation Partner: How many implementation has he done in the same type of company/industry and what level of consulting expertise he is going to deploy for your implementation.