And IT managers had better get out of their "nerdy closets" if things are going to improve, he said.
"IT people in the last 10 to 15 years have over-promised and under-delivered in creating value," said Tex Gunning, Asia Pacific president of Unilever Bestfoods.
He was speaking as part of a panel discussion at the IX2003 conference, now on in Singapore. The topic of the discussion was whether IT today could still deliver tangible results in business.
The discussion touched on the controversial report July in the Harvard Business Review which questioned the strategic value of IT.
"The ability of IT in value creation is at a minimum and has not excited people in business," said Gunning.
Part of the problem lay in the quarter-to-quarter thinking that permeates current business activity, where shareholders insist that investments must have immediate payoffs, he said.
However, the most interesting IT applications today are those can only deliver results after five to 10 years, he said. Such ambitious applications include those that involve the integration of heterogeneous, cross-platform environments that will allow different companies to work closer.
The challenge for IT managers was how to get people to think the way they used to -- with decisions driven by a vision, rather than short-term gains.
"Technology is not going to be the challenge. It's a human challenge. It's the challenge of convincing companies to invest in competencies in the long term," he said.
He challenged IT managers to adopt a greater leadership role in companies.
Fellow panellist Paul Chan, managing director of Hewlett-Packard Asia Pacific, said he "did not disagree" with Gunning.
He recognised that there was an IT culture and business culture and that the two could live in separate worlds. He too, called for IT managers to start looking at the business through the eyes of the business managers.
Chan felt that one way for IT to truly transform businesses was to give a board member such as the chief executive or chief operating officer direct oversight over the technology, rather than the chief operating officer.
