How Will You Invest Invest Your IT Dollars?

Computerworld - The year is brand new, but the budget challenges are old news: very little money to spend and plenty of projects competing. Among this year's Premier 100 IT Leaders, spending plans vary widely. As expected, some IT shops face budget cuts driven by lower-than-anticipated revenue. Even many CIOs in healthy industries will rein in spending voluntarily as a preemptive defense against a possible slowdown. Still others are already accustomed to spending less than 1% of revenue on IT -- a tight budget to begin with. Perhaps most surprisingly, at least one past Premier 100 IT Leader is increasing his IT spending by 25%.
In other words, technology spending in 2003 will depend heavily on industry and business needs. Some of the Premier 100 leaders will invest to meet federal regulations; others will double their IT training budgets because they have recently rolled out several applications. Many enterprises, having spent years trying to increase revenue through customer-facing technology initiatives, will turn their focus inward, where returns are more assured.
There's a common thread among this year's IT leaders, however. In forward-thinking enterprises, technology spending is now clearly and closely tied to corporate strategy.
It's a perennial challenge: In a recent Gartner Inc. survey of 1,500 CIOs, "strategizing for IT/business linkage" was listed as the No. 1 IT management priority, and it has topped other surveys for a decade or more. In leading organizations, IT is no longer viewed as a wild card or black box; its budget is scrutinized by an executive committee. Projects that get the green light are expected to produce results.
Taking a Deep Breath
Daniel W. Garrow, senior vice president of information systems and CIO at Mohegan Sun Casino in Uncasville, Conn., has spent the past two and a half years presiding over a $1 billion property expansion and simultaneous infrastructure upgrade. He plans to focus on fine-tuning a host of new systems and applications. "We completely redid our network," he says, which included bringing broadband Internet connections to a new 1,200-room hotel for the $787 million casino operation.
"A lot of the infrastructure expenses are behind us," Garrow says. "In 2003, our focus is on cleaning up what we call logical construction debris. There are loose ends to tie up, interfaces that need to be tweaked. . . . We're taking this year to settle into our new systems."
Among those loose ends is Mohegan Sun's first suite of hotel management software from Lawrenceville, Ga.-based Inter-American Data. The hotel has Inter-American's Lodging Management System 1.5 up