At the recent Dutch conference that VWB organised on the people aspects of information technology (IcT-manager The Person), the key themes that emerged were the pace of change, the increasing use of secure e-commerce for business-to-business transactions and the overwhelming competitive advantage that effective people can bring to an organisation.
Over 150 international heads of IT and Chief Executives from the industry and companies with significant IT functions attended the conference.
In a keynote speech, Professor Anton C. Zijderveld of Erasmus University commented on the change process, and reassured delegates that this was not new. While the change might seem revolutionary, in practice world history pointed to a gradual evolution of ideas.
The professor focused his lecture on the role of IT in the 'capillaries of society'. IT alters the awareness of time, space and place. The increasing use of e-mail drastically changes the way we communicate so that we may become careless in our use of electronic language. On the other hand it creates new possibilities of development. In the past it was very difficult to communicate from overseas to home; nowadays you have better contact with your daughter in New York than as a student nearby. The Global Village functions more and more as a reality.
In that respect the prizewinner of the contest for IT Manager of the Year, Ria Coolen of Novib, a welfare organisation in developing countries, showed how e-mail had become a powerful weapon to anticipate problems in specific areas.
Developing the overall themes in workshops, Erik Jager from the HR and interim consultancy Entrance commented on how new technology was leading to greater equality in the workplace and the recognition that empowering individual staff ensured effective output. HR functions could either consist of people who dealt with administrative processes at the lowest levels, or move to become real change agents.
Building on this concept, RLT Associates' speakers Roy and Edward Lecky-Thompson explained why the new breed of IT workers made such demands on their employers, and advised on how organisations could move from just acceptable human resources practice to best practice. It is important to recognise the differences that the history, culture and personalities make in a company, and to note that one solution can not apply to every business. A detailed needs analysis is going to be necessary and good listening is the key.
With workshop participants complaining that their human resource functions failed to add value to their companies, and marking them as 65% effective, Roy also explained how tailor-made measurements (or metrics) could be used to assess outputs once they had been agreed with all concerned.
The final message from the conference was that new software applications now make it possible for various software languages to communicate with each other. The Internet makes companies adjust their technology constantly for e-commerce purposes. Clients are more used to doing business electronically, and to have a marketing website is not enough. Electronic data exchange and ordering is therefore a major issue. Companies and people want to order products and services 24 hours a day, any place and any time. This alters logistics, speed of delivery and availability of products and services around the world.
This conference is one a series of four that are being run throughout 2001-2002.