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While
midsize businesses continue to show strength, vendors
are clamoring for a share of their IT budgets and
bending over backwards to gain market share. Prices
have fallen and more technologies have been customized
to meet the specific needs of the midsize enterprise.
At
the recent Midsize Enterprise Summit where nearly
300 senior IT executives gathered, we found that many
are already in the final phase of planning and budgeting
for 2004. They’re putting initiatives in place
to improve the value of their established investments
as well as justify new ones. Although the pressure
continues to deliver more with less, midsize business
IS departments appear well positioned to succeed in
the coming year.
How
will IT budgets be spent in 2004? We asked executives
from retail, manufacturing, healthcare and financial
services to lend us insight on their top three priorities
for next year:
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Retail:
Batteries Plus, the largest, most comprehensive
and most sophisticated battery store chain in
America.
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This
year’s major project – putting a
data warehouse in place – has enormous
ramifications for what’s to come in 2004
at Batteries Plus. The culmination will be a
business intelligence model and delivery product
that will result in development of extensive
business growth for them. From this stems a
national accounts program including e-commerce
to offer a Web ordering system, and data access
via the Internet to all of Batteries Plus franchisees.
“And,
of course, security is an ongoing issue”,
said Michael Lehman, VP Information Technology.
“Our POS system is a central WAN-enabled
system that allows all our stores to connect
at real-time so it’s near and dear to
us. We’ll be continually looking at our
infrastructure from headquarters and from the
store standpoint to ensure that we have the
right security model in place.”
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Manufacturing:
Manitowoc Crane Group, a leading producer of lattice-boom
cranes, tower cranes, mobile hydraulic cranes,
boom trucks, and related products for the construction
industry.
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“My
top three today – upgrading our ERP system,
reviewing the requirements for implementing
CRM, and continuing to create a single data
center within North America for The Crane Group,”
said Dan Stuart, Director – Information
Services Americas.
Could
this change? “Absolutely,” said
Stuart, “but only if we have a major business
change that would require resources to bring
the companies together. That, unfortunately,
will come from other line items.”
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Healthcare:
Lexington Medical Center, a 292-bed
metropolitan medical complex that anchors a comprehensive,
county-wide health care network.
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“At
LMC, we have the challenge of ongoing projects
into 2004”, said CIO George Evans. “We
are growing like gangbusters right now in terms
of new customers, and adding new people at a
blistering pace. My main priorities will stem
from this as the main IS challenge is to rapidly
deploy out to new areas, while continuing to
run current, required resources.”
In
a nutshell – remote access, security and
complying with HIPAA statutes are at the top
of the list of business challenges that Evans’
department will address in 2004.
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Financial
Services: BenefitMallSM.com
is the leading provider of products, services,
and tools for brokers selling small-group employee
benefits.
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2004
is going to look different for BenefitMall.com.
“We’ve been so focused on cost the
past 2 years that we’ve simply concentrated
on getting the enterprise architecture in place
and not much else,” said Scott Howitt,
Chief Information Officer.
His
plans will now focus on projects that will increase
sales by reducing quote processing time, streamlining
payments, and expanding the “intelligence”
that he can offer brokers to make them more
competitive. “The foundation is in place,”
said Howitt, “now we can do whizz-bang
things for our customers.”
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It’s
still a buyer’s market. Are you taking advantage
of the opportunity to purchase what’s required
to take your midsize enterprise to the next level?
We’d like to hear how, and welcome your questions
to midmarket@gartner.com.
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