Given the cutbacks in IT investments by Irish companies, it was surprising to learn that the two big banks, a number of large food processing companies and other big firms had gathered at the Radisson SAS Hotel this week to hear about a new IT system billed as the next big thing in business performance management.
Gartner eMetrix, an off-shoot of the Gartner Group, launched a system based on Web-channel technology that gives managers clear, near real-time visibility of the key performance indicators (inventory levels and speed of response to requests).
Launched in conjunction with Digital Channel Partners (DCP), it supposedly addresses the inability in the digital economy to view performance and return on capital, and radically changes the way business performance is measured, according to Mr Al Lill, vice-president of Gartner eMetrix.
"Business performance tends to be confined to individual functions in the company rather than across the board," Mr Lill said.
"What we felt was needed was to be able to look at the entire value chain, not just the individual components."
In addition, being able to monitor functions continuously rather than occasionally has become essential. "You don't need to see what things are going well, you need to see what things are going wrong."
On the face of it, the system seems designed to increase accountability and transparency, but Mr Lill says that in today's competitive economy "you can't hide anymore".
Mr Tony Brennan, director of eMetrix in DCP, hopes eMetrix will become an industry standard. In eMetrix, he said, you are not relying on one company's perspective over another.
"Everyone knows that you are measuring exactly the same thing in exactly the same way, regardless of where you fit in an organisation."
The system has already been on offer in the US for about four to five months and the reception has been "pretty good", said Mr Lill.
To show the scale of the system, no organisation, no matter how big, could implement the entire range of what eMetrix has to offer. As a result, the company tends to approach the sale of eMetrix on a gradual basis, targeting it at a customer's most fundamental business systems first and seeing how it works out before spreading it out.
A typical organisation which implements a significant subset of the entire eMetrix suite will expect to pay something in the region of $100,000 to $200,000 (€116,000 to €233,000) or more.
In these cost-conscious times, payback will be needed quickly. It takes six to 10 weeks to implement a subset suite, but "if you don't get a complete payback within six to nine months, then we're doing something wrong", said Mr Lill.
