Today, McAfee points out, the larger IT spenders are the leaders in their industries-running the gamut from retail to food to pharma. And for those market leaders who spent the largest sums on implementing IT, there is no way to opt out today without taking a major hit from the competition.
According to McAfee, manufacturers who have adopted the latest tools-many of them Internet- and Web-based-have seen a variety of benefits, provided they’ve adapted to the cultural changes the tools tend to create. While the tools foster better analysis, more experimentation and corporate innovation, manufacturers also have discovered that the new tools have broken down walls of responsibility and encouraged input from workers who may not have had access before to functions such as product design or business processes.