Oscar Wilde described a cynic as a ‘man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing’. Unfortunately for Oscar, the IT industry, and its customers, that cynicism is fairly widespread, most notably when it comes to developing relationships between vendor and buyer.
However, the most successful organisations have realised that cynicism has a long-term detrimental effect on their business. The CEO Census report 2007 shows one of the three ‘critical success factors’ for chief information officers (CIOs) is to align IT services with business strategy, while simultaneously improving performance and reducing cost. In their efforts to achieve these success factors, forward-thinking companies are starting to look at technology suppliers as strategic partners. As a result they are already stealing a march on their competitors, and are in a far better position to take advantage of the rapid developments that characterise IT.
