下一波科技革命瞄準官僚主義

????過去20年里，沒有任何東西能像信息技術一樣，如此徹底、如此頻繁地催生商業變革。第一波ＩＴ革命中，IT技術的進步促使很多公司改進了運營模式。第二波IT革命中，網絡的力量日益彰顯，促使整個企業界都要徹底重新思考自己的商業模式。未來幾年里，姍姍來遲的第三波IT革命終將大范圍催生管理模式的革命。

????第一波：新的運營模式

????作者邁克爾?漢默和詹姆斯?杰姆培在1993年的暢銷書《企業再造》（Re-engineering the Corporation）中曾經指出，企業的采購、生產及分銷產品和服務的流程應該進行一番徹底的改造。雖然簡化工作流程的理念早已不新鮮了（早在90年前，弗雷德里克?溫斯洛?泰勒就在大聲疾呼“科學化管理”），但是直到現在，IT技術才使企業具備了打破職能團隊各自為戰的局面、簡化繁瑣流程、顯著削短反應時間的能力。

????這本書出版后，全球各大企業投入了數以千億美元計的資金用于簡化、整合供應鏈。到今天，全球范圍內已經很難找出一家沒有向SAP、甲骨文（Oracle）和Salesforce等企業購買過ERP（企業資源規劃）和CRM（客戶關系管理）“解決方案”的大公司。

????上世紀90年代初期時，所謂的“企業再造”在一個新入行的CIO眼中可能只是個一次性投資的工程，但現在它已經成了永無止境的軍備競賽。每項新技術（大數據、云計算、移動）的問世都會引發一場賽跑。當然，競爭的代價也不便宜。據IT咨詢公司高德納（Gartner）預測，2013年全球企業花在企業軟件上的資金高達3000億美元。這個數額雖然聽起來高得嚇人，但實際不到總體IT支出的8%。雖然IT很少百分之百實現它所許諾的藍圖，但沒有一家企業敢對它說不。押IT這一寶，不加注就要落后。

????Over the past 20 years, nothing has transformed business as thoroughly or as frequently as information technology. In the first wave, advances in IT prompted many companies to revamp their operating models. In Wave 2, the growing power of the Web provoked a fundamental rethink of business models. And over the next few years, Wave 3 will yield a broad-based and long overdue revolution in management models.

????Wave 1: New Operating Models

????In their 1993 bestseller, Re-engineering the Corporation, Michael Hammer and James Champy argued for a comprehensive retooling of the operating processes that organizations use to source, produce, and distribute their products and services. While the idea of simplifying workflows was hardly new (90 years earlier, it had been at the heart of Frederick Winslow Taylor's crusade for "scientific management"), what was new was the capacity of information technology to bust through functional silos, simplify byzantine processes, and dramatically reduce response times.

????In the wake of Hammer and Champy's book, businesses around the world spent hundreds of billions of dollars integrating and streamlining their supply chains. Today, it would be hard to find a large organization that hasn't paid a small fortune to vendors like SAP (SAP), Oracle (ORCL), and Salesforce (CRM) for their ERP (enterprise resource planning) and CRM (customer relationship management) "solutions."

????Re-engineering, which might have looked like a one-time project to a neophyte CIO in the early 1990s, has become a never-ending arms race. Each new technology -- big data, cloud computing, mobile -- launches a new sprint. It isn't cheap to stay in the race. IT consultancy Gartner estimated that in 2013, companies around the world ponied up nearly $300 billion for enterprise software; an amount that, though staggering, was less than 8% of total IT spending. While IT seldom delivers all it promises, no organization can opt out. It's ante up or fall behind.