IT as a Strategic Advantage
Todd Girvin, President and COO
5.29.02

Since the bubble burst in the world of information technology, many companies have drastically reduced spending on IT. As the economy recovers and the IT world returns to some semblance of normalcy, we're in danger of the old mindset returning—where IT is just a means to an end rather than a key strategic asset.

Certainly IT departments should consider themselves service bureaus—helping other departments inside the organization with their technology needs. The danger lies in them becoming purely reactive. If new technology is only introduced at the request of non-technical departments or if issues are being address only when problems arise, the organization as a whole is falling behind and is destined to be a laggard in the industry.

Regardless of the state of the economy, businesses will always be in competition with each other. And, used strategically, information technology can give your company a competitive advantage. Just a 2% gain in market penetration or operational efficiency compounds over time and, in a few years, you'll be leaving the competition in the dust. Strategically, companies should constantly be searching for ways to achieve small gains. And, information technology provides a variety of ways to accomplish just that.

The spirit of the new economy is to conduct business in innovative ways—especially ways making use of improved information flow via the Internet. Whether you’re striving to make a distributed workforce more of a community, automating business processes and workflows, or working to communicate more effectively to your target market, Internet technologies can provide dramatic, business-changing solutions.

OptiView Technologies delivers solutions that accelerate the World Wide Web. For site owners, we can improve your revenues by increasing the completion of ecommerce transactions or improve communication within your team. For groups of Internet surfers such as ISPs or corporate networks, we can simultaneously cut operational costs and improve worker productivity on the Web. As an example, if your LAN access to the Internet feels slower than a 56K modem, your workers are losing their trains of thought and suffering huge inefficiencies at while performing simple research or procurement tasks. OptiView solves that problem easily and cost effectively. For the company in either camp, a strategic investment in your network infrastructure will give you significant gains that quickly add up to a real competitive advantage.