I do have something to blog about. Actually a question to ask. I just read an article (www.cio.com/article/140750) from CIO magazine where Dawn Lepore (a former CIO turned CEO) "tells her own CIO that all IT investments should be customer focused".
Now, on the face of things, I agree whole-heartedly with that statement. In practice, though, it's not as easy as it looks. If my company were a financial institution, a utility, a retail company, etc., identification of the customer is fairly straight forward. What about other companies where the customer is not as clearly "defined"? For example, at my company, a Pharmaceutical company, who is the customer? Is it the person (or group) that pays for our medicine? Is it the person (or group) that prescribes the medicine? Or is it the person(s) that use our medicine? The problem is that 99% of the time none of those people are the same person and they all have an impact on the company. So what does IT focus on? Ultimately, the company needs to protect the consumer (the user of the product) from a safety perspective, and IT can help to streamline the payment process between companies and health insurance or prescription plan coverages, and even help the sales force to improve their dialogs with the doctors to show our products' benefits. But that's still a three headed monster and don't get me started on the regulatory requirements, or even the global environment that the company works in...
Thoughts?? I know, I know, emerging tech (at least in my opinion) is much more fun to discuss... :)
Hit the comments. You know where.
Jim
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