The Intelligent Evolution Series of Books: written with the senior executive’s needs in mind. These are concise treatises on subjects about business and technology. This series is designed for executives who want to familiarize themselves with information about technology management, in order to understand how to better leverage their company’s investments in technology. No one disputes the fact that technology can improve the performance of the organization. Technology is a key enabler of both process improvement and organization development.

Origins

The Intelligent Evolution Series: Origins (the first in the series) shows that technology maturity should be in alignment with business maturity. As a business grows through the phases of startup, small, medium, large and enterprise size; so must the technology supporting systems grow. It can be shown that a startup business does not typically need a full functional ERP system with a data center to transact business – many dot-com companies learned this the hard way as they went out of business. Technology should be aligned to address business value delivered to the customer.

Many technology leaders are focused on the need to make the organization more productive and cost-effective. They work diligently to reduce capital outlay on technology often to the detriment of the value provided to their customers. For example, a small medical practice that installed internal email systems to save money, learned they could have outsourced their e-mail needs and obtained equal or superior services for less cost. They later realized that email does not provide any customer value.

The Partners of Phoenix2000 Group believe the Intelligent Evolution series of books will build better understanding between business leaders and the technologists that are charged with making technology work for the business.

Papers Written by Phoenix2000 Group Partners

Do Boards need a Technology Audit Committee?
Technology decisions will outlive the tenue of the management team.

Client-Advisor Relationship
What does it mean to have a trusting relationship? How do you build trust?

Document and Data Management Considerations for Private Companies
Sarbanes-Oxley is overkill for private companies. But what do private companies need to consider? What are they bound by laws and what is best business judgement? This article outlines what a prudent business person should do about document and data retention. [This article was co-written by Kent Clayton with Berger Khan]

Papers of Note and Current Interest

Technology Business Diagnostic Tool
Learn about the six major areas of alignment and specific functional questions to find your technology to business maturity.

Information Technology Appraisal
Do you know all the different areas, key vendors, information to control your IT department. Use this handy checklist to gather all your information into a framework for evalution.