IT – Does it Matter?

There is no doubt that IT is integral part of our daily lives. Almost everything done in our daily life is some way affected by IT. Businesses are now plagued with the issue of whether IT has strategic importance to the functioning and survival of their business. Will IT continue on and improve or will there be something even better that comes along and keeps the world working?


In the article, “IT Doesn’t Matter,” by Nicholas Carr, one the main points made by the author is that IT is a commodity and a necessity that businesses must now have to survive and compete but it is no longer a strategic advantage. In order for IT to be truly effective and cost efficient, the technology needs to be shared. IT is infrastructural technology which means that it is not an advantage that a certain company has, it is a technology that can be shared and used by many. It is impossible to say that IT doesn’t matter. The way we live our lives would be drastically altered and changed if we did not use IT but there are downsides.

Benefits

If you think back not long ago, it took days to get in touch with a person across the world and even across the nation. Connecting with people was much more difficult and now you can keep in touch with someone with the touch of a button. Information exchange was slow and by the time the information reached its receiver, it could already be obsolete. Today, there are no physical limitations on the exchange of information. A person can be on the other side of the world and receive information as fast as someone one city over from you. The benefit of this cannot be discredited. The effectiveness of businesses has increased because of this. Employees can work from home or from exotic locales and still produce the same results. Businesses now no longer have to operate in large, crowded cities. They can move to a rural location and business can continue as usual. Time and money are also saved by IT. Information is available for companies to make quick and effective decisions that are going to save them time and money. IT makes business practices more accurate. There are certain tedious activities that a computer can do instead of a person and it eliminates human error. The connectivity to the entire world cannot be ignored. If the IT systems of the world stopped working, it is quite possible that most of the world would stop working. So many processes are reliant on IT that it is unlikely that we could now survive without them.

Disadvantages

There are several downsides to being reliant on IT. Most IT, especially in the early stages, is very expensive. Many companies have to update the way they do business just to survive and that means investing in new technology. Imagine if you went into a store and they only accepted a check or cash. Not many people would frequent the store or make purchases. Surviving in today’s marketplace is much more difficult and expensive. Price is also a factor when something goes wrong. Computer systems can be very costly to fix and what happens to a small business owner when their entire system shuts down? The price of IT has and will continue to drop but it still may be more than some businesses can handle. Security is also a major issue with IT. If not managed right, IT can malfunction and important and valuable data can be lost or compromised. With the increase in technology comes and increase in theft and crime. How is that a benefit? According to the article, many companies are now losing ground because they have spent so much time and money developing resources that they are going out of business because they are losing their competitive edge.

The benefits of IT obviously out way any disadvantages that also accompany it. There is no way to survive in the business world without it. The main thing to remember now is that IT is no longer an advantage, it’s a necessity. If businesses treat IT that way and think of what they really need, they will be better off. An excellent point made by Carr was that “The key to success, for the vast majority of companies, is no longer to seek advantage aggressively but to manage costs and risks meticulously.” It is now important for companies to use IT to their advantage and to survive.