Does This Sybase Study Matter?
New Sybase-sponsored research linked to Nicholas Carr's "Does IT Matter?" crusade obfuscates the study's impact.
The press release's headline sure is impressive: "Study Reveals 10 Percent Increase in Usability of Enterprise Data Can Translate to $2 Billion in Additional Revenue Every Year."
Print
That's Billion with a B. Not too shabby.
The University of Texas's business school in conjunction with the Indian School of Business conducted the research, which appears to be no small feat. The study "looks at five distinct attributes of data—quality, usability, intelligence, remote accessibility and sales mobility—and examines how a 10 percent improvement in any one or two of these attributes affects the metrics commonly reported for assessing the financial performance of businesses," notes a press release.
The Daddy Warbucks sponsoring this research is Sybase, which sells "enterprise and mobile software to manage, analyze and mobilize information" (also know as "data").
Now, most of us have come to a place in our adult lives where "sponsored survey" equals "substantial skepticism." After all, most companies don't commission surveys and research because they have a quest for uncovering communal market truths; they pony up the cash because they want "outside" and "independent" validation of their product and sales strategies.
Which should not disparage the researcher's efforts or the thrust of the findings: A 10 percent improvement that delivers $2 billion in additional revenue? Not bad. (But just be sure to grab some salt.)
The survey does quantitatively validate what many others have been saying for decades: Even the best of applications and decision-making processes will be rendered ineffective by bad data. Garbage in, garbage out.
"This is the first study that quantifies the relationship between incremental improvements in data and key performance metrics of businesses today," notes Anitesh Barua, distinguished teaching professor and lead researcher at the University of Texas at Austin. "Previous studies tell us neither the magnitude of the effect on performance nor what it takes to improve the attributes of data."
The study (which can be downloaded for free) looks at four areas and offers compelling numbers on: employee productivity, return on equity, return on invested capital and return on assets. The survey researchers looked to the "world's leading enterprises across a wide range of industries" for their data: The researchers measured the direct correlation between a company's IT investments and overall business performance.
For some, the critical correlation—that a company's IT investments can boost its overall business performance—is somewhat relatable to the "IT Doesn't Matter" firestorm lit by Nicholas Carr in 2003, in that well-done IT can make a significant difference.
In fact, in a related blog post on ZDNet, Eric Lai, who is employed by Sybase's marketing team, states that this new data "refutes" Carr's inflammatory theories. (When I was on ZDNet.com, there was also a Sybase advertisement right next to Lai's post.)
"While there's been no dearth of rhetoric since Carr first made his argument seven years ago," Lai opines, "there's finally some empirical data addressing—and refuting—it."
Hmmmmm. The study's authors never mention Carr in the report. And I'm not sure Lai should have either.
Previous Post: Enterprise Social Software: Look Before You LeapNext Post: Oracle's New Co-President: The Hire Hurd 'Round the World
Most Discussed Posts
Cloud computing has emerged as one of the most significant game changers to hit the technology landscape in the past 20 years. With this massive expansion of the cloud, the perception of the IT organization is shifting from a utility player to a change agent. This eBook breaks down five ways progressive organizations are using cloud-based IT Management solutions to help drive innovation and become more strategic, including: adding visibility and analytics, speeding up time-to-value, lowering costs, improving prioritization, and providing a blueprint for future cloud deployments.
Read the white paper to see how IBM helped Citigroup deliver new services and enhancements to their 200 million customers faster.
There are 3 ways to modernize legacy applications: rewrite completely, acquire packaged solutions or migrate existing code. This paper explains why it's best to migrate and how IBM® Rational® software can help.
Accommodating specific lines of business can result in a hybrid ecosystem of applications and servers. The resulting complexity of this architecture makes for an environment that is costly to maintain and difficult to change when addressing new challenges.
This whitepaper will help you to define a mobile device passcode policy. Security managers must attempt to reconcile two opposing goals. They must: 1) create a passcode policy that is strong enough to protect the device if it is lost or stolen, while: 2) not annoying users with needless length or complexity.
This whitepaper, authored by The Radicati Group, looks at the key reasons organizations should consider moving to a cloud-based archiving solution. Email archiving solutions enable organizations to store, monitor, and collect electronic data exchanged by their users to comply with internal policies and regulations.
ATERNITY will showcase a 30-minute demo on how Fortune 500 companies are leveraging its award-winning FPI Platform to deliver a user-centric approach to Proactive IT Management.
For businesses to move forward and tap into the ever-expanding universe of Internet users and network-enabled devices, it's critical to learn how to make the transition to IPv6. Learn the critical steps your organization must take to make a seamless transition-and keep your business world connected.
Learn how IT teams can protect against spear phishing tactics. Harry Sverdlove, chief technology officer of Bit9 offers a frank discussion about spear phishing - the most common technique used in today's advanced attacks.
Learn how to build a solid business case for your migration to Red Hat Enterprise Linux so you can run leaner, innovate faster, be more flexible and own the New Now.
Social media isn't about you; it's about everything around you. As you consider how your customers want to communicate with you, social media is something that can't be ignored. But what should your strategy be? Is social media "just another channel?" What kind of a plan makes sense for your contact center and for your customers? Join our experts as they share their insight and research results.
Hardware tokens were a popular method of strong authentication in past years but the cumbersome provisioning and distribution tasks, high support requirements and replacement costs have limited their growth. The additional log-in steps that hardware tokens require and the resulting user frustrations have limited adoption and make them impractical for larger scale partner and customer applications.
Sponsored Links
