IT initiatives getting on CEO calendar, says study

The good news: information technology will play a role in more than half of all strategic decisions by the year 2000, according to a new study from the London School of Economics and Compass Analysis, a Reston, VA management consultancy. The bad news: CEOs still believe that only 33% of IT spending results in a measurable contribution to profitability. The information comes from interviews with 353 CEOs and 152 IT directors at over 500 of the world's top 3,000 companies. Other tidbits from the study: IT currently is behind roughly 40% of corporate strategy; 55% of IT investments are designed to yield a competitive advantage. IT is seen as more valuable in the financial sector, where CEOs say IT influences 51% of strategic decisions; manufacturing CEOs say that IT only influences 32% of strategy. Of those CEOs that didn't view IT as impacting their bottom line, some want to see more effective measurement tools, while others believe that quantifying IT value "is inherently difficult."