IT Savvy: What Top Executives Must Know to Go from Pain to Gain

Digitization of business interactions and processes is advancing full bore. But in many organizations, returns from IT investments are flatlining, even as technology spending has skyrocketed.

These challenges call for new levels of IT savvy: the ability of all managers-IT or non-IT-to transform their company's technology assets into operational efficiencies that boost margins. Companies with IT-savvy managers are 20 percent more profitable than their competitors.

In IT Savvy, Peter Weill and Jeanne Ross-two of the world's foremost authorities on using IT in business-explain how non-IT executives can acquire this savvy. Concise and practical, the book describes the practices, competencies, and leadership skills non-IT managers need to succeed in the digital economy. You'll discover how to:

-Define your firm's operating model-how IT can help you do business

-Revamp your IT funding model to support your operating model

-Build a digitized platform of business processes, IT systems, and data to execute on the model

-Determine IT decision rights

-Extract more business value from your IT assets

Packed with examples and based on research into eighteen hundred organizations in more than sixty countries, IT Savvy is required reading for non-IT managers seeking to push their company's performance to new heights.

Peter Weill is chairman of the Center for Information Systems Research (CISR) at MIT. Ziff-Davis and eweek.com named him twenty-fourth of the 100 most influential people in IT. Jeanne W. Ross is director of MIT CISR and founding senior editor and former editor-in-chief of MISQ Executive, a journal for managers translating research findings into action.