In a NY Times story with a misleading title, the theme is that IBM is different from commodity producers in the tech world. But buried near the end of the story is the secret IBM strategy to achieve that difference: INDUSTRIALIZATION OF SERVICES. Here are the key paragraphs.
"I.B.M. talks about the “industrialization of services” as a key strategic goal. That industrialization process includes paring services jobs down to standardized, repeatable tasks; spreading the work around to world to where it can be done most efficiently and most inexpensively; and steadily automating simpler tasks with software. The benefits of a globalized work force should diminish over time, as wages rise for skilled workers in India, for example. But if more and more services work can be done with software instead of people, I.B.M.’s profit margins could well keep improving — and the company could separate itself further from other tech suppliers. In response to an analyst’s question last week, Mark Loughridge, I.B.M.’s chief financial officer, said that much of the profit improvement came from projects that joined the company’s research scientists with services teams to automate tasks. That, Mr. Loughridge said, is a “unique capability that I don’t think you’d see in our competitors.” full at: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/23/ibm-no-longer-a-tech-bellwether/?ref=business Gene _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
