Hurdles to adopting IT standards

While companies generally accept the notion that remaining competitive requires devoting more of their IT budgets to systems that connect them with customers and suppliers, there appears to be a fairly high level of frustration with efforts to establish standards for implementing those systems.

A recent survey of 300 IT decision makers by Boston-based Yankee Group revealed 30 percent of organizations consider cost as the single biggest impediment to adopting particular B2B standards. The second biggest impediment, according to 25 percent of the respondents, is the existence of too many standards for single vertical industries. And of the respondents, 13 percent said having too many different organizations involved in standards-making efforts is stalling the adoption of standards in the supply chain arena.

Despite this frustration, Yankee Group reports that IT executives firmly believe "the ability to exchange information with customers and suppliers will have the greatest impact of any factor on [their companies'] success over the next five years."