Economics in the Information Technology (IT) Industry

Economics in the IT Industry -- Additional Four Pages for Your Essay

Making Information Technologies a Competitive Strength

The pace and depth of innovation continues to accelerate in all sectors of IT. Across all sectors, enterprise and organizations that choose to automate their core business processes using IT systems and platforms are gaining the greatest impact of all however. Manufacturing and services companies are adopting Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems to streamline their supply chain, sourcing, procurement, production and service strategies (Sternad, Gradisar, Bobek, 1511). ERP systems are proving to be extremely valuable for these organizations as they strive to create a more unified series of business strategies across all their divisions. IT has emerged as an agile platform to support business' growth over the long-term as a result.

IT investments are also now entirely tied to business objectives and strategies as well. This has made IT critical form any companies to gain the information and knowledge they need in order to keep producing their product, serving customers, managing pricing and production in a synchronized way. Globalization, continued economic risk and uncertainty, and the rapidly increasing pace of new product development across many diverse industries is also making IT a critical asset for managing a business. In short, IT has become the dial tone in many enterprises, creating the information and knowledge necessary to manage a diverse set of product divisions, services, distribution channels and new product development programs.

IT is also driving the development of entirely new approaches to unifying the enterprise as well. The growth of Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) and Web Services to streamline the most critical business processes enterprises continue to also show the value of IT as well.

Where Web Services have shown the greatest value and contribution of IT is in streamlining the supply chain, production and services processes with what customers expect (Lee, Kwon, Lee, Park, Hong, 2193). IT is progressing at such a rapid pace in enterprises that it is revolutionizing how databases are used to better attract, sell and serve customers, while also making large-scale systems more intuitive and easier to use (Sternad, Gradisar, Bobek, 1511). The role of Web Services will continue to accelerate and be used for capturing, processing, producing and delivering products across globally-based production centers and manufacturing plants. As SOA platforms support Web Services and allow for cross-production center transactions and workflows, companies are investing heavily in this area of IT to drive down costs and increase response times (Lee, Kwon, Lee, Park, Hong, 2193). The future of IT's use in enterprises will continue to support complex transaction workflows while making the use of these systems intuitive and easily learned by everyone who is reliant on them (Sternad, Gradisar, Bobek, 1511). IT is the new dial tone for enterprises, and is going to accelerate business sales, production, services and new product development given its ability to unify all aspects of a business model. SOA and Web Services are case in point where this is occurring today (Lee, Kwon, Lee, Park, Hong, 2193). The benefits of IT in large-scale enterprises are delivering far beyond their costs, leading many Chief Information Officers to consider increased investments in new applications that can unify their companies and deliver strong Return on Investment (ROI). As companies become more focused on competing with knowledge over just production capacity or expertise, IT will continue to be an essential element in their transition to services-based business models as well.

Analytics And The Future of IT

Using IT systems and technologies to gain a better understanding of businesses are performing is a field called performance management and analytics (Halper, 17). The use of analytics is increasing, due in large part to their ability to reduce risk and show areas where companies can invest more effectively for long-term growth. As a result, analytics are now a core part of many strategic planning functions within companies (Klatt, Schlaefke, Moeller, 30). IT has made all of these advances in analytics possible, providing businesses with greater intelligence and insight than they have ever had in the past. All of these benefits translate into more efficient approaches to defining and developing new products to meet customer needs. Using IT strategies, companies can understand how to attract, sell and serve customers, generating a higher level of customer satisfaction and profitability at the same time (Halper, 17). Analytics will continue to grow as a result of the contributions IT is making to better decisions.