 |
Press Releases
Groundbreaking Intranet Study Launched
Fuld & Company and MIT Sloan School Professor Seek Companies to
Help Develop Intranet Intelligence Gold Standards
Cambridge, MA - October 19, 2000 - Fuld & Company has joined
forces with John Rockart, founding Director of the MIT Sloan School of
Management's Center for Information Systems Research, to launch a study
to examine the effectiveness of corporate intranets. The Fuld-MIT team
is currently inviting companies around the world to join the study, which
will examine the use of intranets and how they capture and convey critical
market intelligence to managers throughout an organization.
For the first time, a study will examine the critical effectiveness of
corporate intranets and how they influence management decision making.
In particular, the Fuld-MIT team will examine how corporate intranets are
linked to a company's overall strategy, how the organization supports its
intranet, the features of intranets that make them effective drivers of
strategic and tactical intelligence and where they add value to the corporation.
The group will examine issues surrounding cost savings, competitive advantage
achieved through competitive intelligence, as well as other value-added
areas.
"Companies are likely wasting billions of dollars a year on their
intranets, specifically as they apply to improving the critical use of
intelligence by management," states Leonard M. Fuld, president and
founder of Fuld & Company, a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based intelligence
consulting firm. This year alone, corporations will spend nearly $64 billion
on intranets worldwide and are expected to spend $200 billion per year
by the end of the decade on hardware, software and related services to
support intranets, according to Gartner, Forrester and a host of technology
forecasting services.
"The use of internet technology to improve business-to-business and
business-to-consumer capabilities for organizations of all sizes dominates
the headlines today," says Rockart. "The same technology, if
used effectively internally, however, can provide seamless access to information
and significant benefits. At present, we see a wide range of use of the
intranet with little knowledge of how to gain the best payoff. We need
to study what leads to success in this area."
According to a recent Fuld study, Intranets could actually hinder a company's
competitiveness if not applied effectively. There has been an explosion
of competitive - or business - intelligence intranet services over the
past five to six years. Many corporations offer multiple sites, serving
different business units or divisions. Because many of these home pages
have emerged through grass-roots efforts, few of their creators have shared
and compared their development efforts. Each "competitive intelligence
home page" likely represents hundreds of hours of development time,
thousands of yearly maintenance hours and potentially hundreds of thousands
of dollars in other development costs and software fees. To date, the effectiveness
of such sites has not been measured. By "flying blind," many
of these site developers avoid (or are unable to ask) questions, such as:
Does a particular site meet the needs of its users? Does a site actually
enable decision-makers to improve or accelerate their decision? Or, do
the sites merely aggregate data pools, otherwise adding little value?
Fuld and Rockart are currently inviting a limited cadre of companies to
participate in the study, which will be conducted over the next few months.
Findings of the survey will be released by Spring 2001. A closed-door conference
for all participants of the study will also be held.
The study will be led by Leonard Fuld, Ken Sawka and John Rockart. Fuld,
known as the "father of competitive intelligence," is a noted
author and pioneer in the field of competitive intelligence. Sawka is Vice
President of Fuld & Co. and Director of its Intelligence Systems and
Consulting practice. Rockart was named as one of the top ten MIS consultants
and non-fiction winner of the Computer Press Association Book of the Year
Award by Information Week, and is best known for the development of critical
success factors for initiating the field of executive support systems.
He has written for the Harvard Business Review as well as numerous business
and technical publications.
For more information on this study, please contact Leonard Fuld or Ken
Sawka at 617-492-5900.
Fuld & Company
Based in Cambridge, Mass., with offices in London, England and Geneva,
Switzerland, Fuld & Company specializes in providing business intelligence
consulting services, and has designed intelligence processes for numerous
corporations worldwide. Leonard Fuld is a recognized worldwide as an expert
and author in the field of competitive intelligence.
Other free intelligence tools found at www.fuld.com include
an Internet Intelligence Index, with links to 600 intelligence-related
internet sites; an Intelligence Dictionary, with hyperlinks to related
terms and websites; an interactive Intelligence Forum, where questions
are fielded by Fuld & Company experts, excerpts from Leonard Fuld's
acclaimed book, The New Competitor Intelligence, and an Intelligence Organizer.
Contact:
Sarah Gerrol, (617)
523-4141
sarah@morrisseyco.com
Morrisey & Co.
121 Mount Vernon Street
Boston, MA 02108
|
