InfoWorld: Gartner ITxpo: Real-time strategy key to enterprise survival: March 24, 2003: By Cathleen Moore: E-business Strategies While recovery looms in the future, enterprises today must focus on squeezing more out of existing IT investments to speed decisions and improve productivity. This effort must be combined with transformations in operational, management, and leadership processes

Comment: Sounds good, mine the information you should have, and call the shots. Now step 0 make sure you understand your business, step 1 gather the info, step 2 interpret the data, all very very obvious stuff... Putting it into practice is another story, corporate wide development needs buy in from the corporation and costs money... long sales cycle, long time to ROI, not compatible with today's reality. I'd say empower the troups so that bottom up imporvements are made instead of the top to bottom approach. Make sure the little guy has an ROI, add all the little guys' ROI and see significant cost saving, at that point Corpo buy-in should be easier.