QualPro's 12-step MVT® Process Featured on CFO.com
Need-to-know Tech
By Marie Leone
The ten innovations that will have the biggest impact on business over the next five years.
You don't have to tell a CFO how difficult it is to assess new technology. Mention the phrase "virtually private network" or "B2B exchange" and most finance chiefs get that pained look in their eyes. Indeed, if the road to heaven is paved with good intentions, the road to hell is paved with ERP implementations.
It's not that business innovations like ERP apps or VPNs don't have merit. They do. The trouble is, lots of new technologies have merit. Unfortunately, IT products don't come with a money back guarantee; for every PS/2 there's a Kaypro, for every killer app there's... well... a killer app.
The hyperbole surrounding IT innovation makes a CFO's job doubly difficult. First-generation technology is notoriously dicey stuff. Moreover, tech projects don't lend themselves to traditional ROI calculations like IRR or ROA - the absolute touchstones for a CFO.
Not surprisingly, finance chiefs often find themselves signing off on IT projects they don't understand. Worse: such decisions are often made in a vacuum, with little sense of how one piece of whiz-bang science fits into the larger technological puzzle.
That makes it nearly impossible to place best confidently. To help CFOs get a better sense of which next-gen technologies are true landscape-shakers, CFO.com spoke to a slew of experts. Our list of gurus included IT consultants, futurists, and tech-savvy CFOs. The Question we asked: name the innovations that will have the biggest impact on business over the next five years.
The ten "Need-toKnow Tech" choices can be found in the box at right. A;; ten should change the way companies do business over the next few years. And all should more definately be on a CFO's radar screen - itself a marvel of tecnology.
5. Multivariable Testing (MVT)
Brief: MVT, a proprietary statistical methodology pioneered by Knoxville-based QualPro Inc, is the only non-technology to make the grade for "Need-to-Know Tech." The reason: MV shrinks three big project woes - time, cost, and frustration.
What it is: MVt is designed to help corporate managers figure out if proposed company initiatives will actually improve things. In a nutshell, MVT uses advanced mathmetics to simultaneously test up to 40 ideas (or variables) related to a potential project. The methodology then sorts the variables by the type of impact each will have on the project - positive, negative or non at all.
The distinction is important. According to research, only 25 percent of new ideas improve business processes, while 55 percent have no impact. About 22 percent of new ideas makes things worse.
Skinny: In one real-world experiment, National Enquirer executives used MVT to figure our what to put on the paper's front page. In another, telco SBC/Ameritech reduced its installation backlog by 50 percent based on MVT results. Other companies that have signed on the conduct multivariable testing include Staples, Toys"r"Us, Progressive Insurance, BASF, DuPont, Exxon, Lowe's, Verizon, and Saks.