Leslie Willcocks – författare

This book provides a practical insight to the techniques used in assessing the impact of information technology in your business, before you make a strategic purchase. This book is a guide to recent management research and best practice in industry today. It provides analyses, and measures profit from IT expenditure in companies today. It is divided into four parts: the first two chapters are an overview of the area; the second analyzes the strategic dimension, the third looks at the techniques of evaluation in information systems investment; and the final part looks at the processes and new techniques in the management of information systems investment.

'Delivering Business Value from IT' is focused on the evaluation issue in IT and how IT evaluation can proceed across the life-cycle of any IT investment and be linked positively to improving business performance.Chapters 1,2 and 3 detail an approach to IT evaluation whilst chapters 4 and 5 build on these by showing two distinctive approaches to linking IT to business performance. The remaining three chapters deal with a range of evaluation issues emerging as important - specifically Internet evaluation, Y2K and beyond, EMU, quality outsourcing, infrastructure, role of benchmarking, and cost of ownership issues that practitioners regularly encounter.

'Making IT Count: from strategy to implementation' focuses on the practical elements of delivering Information Technology strategy. Studies regularly show that over half of Information Technology strategies are never implemented, or are unsuccessful in delivering the desired results, and that a significant percentage of strategies implemented were never in the original plans. The linkage between strategy development and delivery needs a very clear focus; this is the key topic that the authors address.The book highlights eight major fallacies in managing IT, and eighteen better practices. It then details how to draw up strategy, instigate navigation techniques and make sourcing decisions. Change and delivery are a major focus, as is infrastructure development. Caselets and full length case studies of organizations such as General Electric, Siemens, Colonial Mutual, Charles Schwab, Macquarie Bank, ICI, United Airlines, Norwich Union, Walgreens and Dell and have been included to show how strategies have been successfully implemented and managed.

Intelligent IT Outsourcing enables practitioners to focus in on the essential issues that need to be addressed so that the fundamental structure of their sourcing strategy and its implementation is sound. The authors provide insight into the challenges likely to be faced and give detailed advice on how to pre-empt and manage these.IT and outsourcing continue to be problematic, not least because fundamental learning about this subject fails to be applied systematically, and because IT is inherently difficult to manage. The economics are not obvious and emerging technologies have to be addressed, therefore IT goes to the heart of many enterprises and interfaces with multiple business units and processes, and there are continuous skills shortages.Unfortunately complexities are not removed in outsourced situations where additional problems come into play, for example the supplier's capabilities, whether the IT is right for an outsourcing solution, and whether the contract is robust but flexible enough to allow for outsourcing to take place. Objectives need to be realistic, and factors such as whether the internal management is mature and capable enough in this field, and the impact of prohibitive switching costs on behaviour once an outsourcing deal has been signed all have to be taken into account.The authors have built up over two decades of research, advisory and practitioner experience that enables them to distil the fundamental challenges in IT and outsourcing and demonstrate how these can be addressed.

Intelligent IT Outsourcing enables practitioners to focus in on the essential issues that need to be addressed so that the fundamental structure of their sourcing strategy and its implementation is sound. The authors provide insight into the challenges likely to be faced and give detailed advice on how to pre-empt and manage these.IT and outsourcing continue to be problematic, not least because fundamental learning about this subject fails to be applied systematically, and because IT is inherently difficult to manage. The economics are not obvious and emerging technologies have to be addressed, therefore IT goes to the heart of many enterprises and interfaces with multiple business units and processes, and there are continuous skills shortages.Unfortunately complexities are not removed in outsourced situations where additional problems come into play, for example the supplier's capabilities, whether the IT is right for an outsourcing solution, and whether the contract is robust but flexible enough to allow for outsourcing to take place. Objectives need to be realistic, and factors such as whether the internal management is mature and capable enough in this field, and the impact of prohibitive switching costs on behaviour once an outsourcing deal has been signed all have to be taken into account.The authors have built up over two decades of research, advisory and practitioner experience that enables them to distil the fundamental challenges in IT and outsourcing and demonstrate how these can be addressed.

'Making IT Count: from strategy to implementation' focuses on the practical elements of delivering Information Technology strategy. Studies regularly show that over half of Information Technology strategies are never implemented, or are unsuccessful in delivering the desired results, and that a significant percentage of strategies implemented were never in the original plans. The linkage between strategy development and delivery needs a very clear focus; this is the key topic that the authors address. The book highlights eight major fallacies in managing IT, and eighteen better practices. It then details how to draw up strategy, instigate navigation techniques and make sourcing decisions. Change and delivery are a major focus, as is infrastructure development. Caselets and full length case studies of organizations such as General Electric, Siemens, Colonial Mutual, Charles Schwab, Macquarie Bank, ICI, United Airlines, Norwich Union, Walgreens and Dell and have been included to show how strategies have been successfully implemented and managed.

'Delivering Business Value from IT' is focused on the evaluation issue in IT and how IT evaluation can proceed across the life-cycle of any IT investment and be linked positively to improving business performance. Chapters 1,2 and 3 detail an approach to IT evaluation whilst chapters 4 and 5 build on these by showing two distinctive approaches to linking IT to business performance. The remaining three chapters deal with a range of evaluation issues emerging as important - specifically Internet evaluation, Y2K and beyond, EMU, quality outsourcing, infrastructure, role of benchmarking, and cost of ownership issues that practitioners regularly encounter.

This book constitutes revised selected papers from the 12th international Global Sourcing Workshop 2018, held in La Thuile, Italy, in February 2018.

With businesses facing rapid change in technologies and digital business models, decision makers need to keep apace with the latest thought leadership in order to deliver value to stakeholders.