IBM 1997 Annual Report Download - page 10

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world, our customers again need
integrators. They need secure, reliable,
scalable technology — in other words,
IBM-style enterprise computing. And
they need partners who understand how
to apply technology to address basic
business issues — our heritage.
Ibelieve IBM’s comeback is a direct
result of our decision to swim against the
tide, to stay together.
Ithink that became clear in 1997 —
not just to us, but to the marketplace at
large. Last year, the idea of IBM began
to take hold. Our vision of a networked
world began to be accepted, not as a
corporate slogan, but as an insightful
view of how the world was really changing.
Wall Street, customers, business partners
and industry consultants welcomed
our e-business campaign, which laid out
a compelling vision for our customers —
compelling because it was real. IBM has
led the industry in transforming
businesses into e-businesses, completing
thousands of e-business customer
engagements. And inside the company,
we’ve been working to transform IBM
itself into the world’s premier e-business.
While I haven’t talked much in
the past about our work to transform
IBM — choosing instead to focus
my public comments on customer
and industry issues — behind the
scenes we’ve been reengineering IBM
from top to bottom, with one goal: to
foster a high-performance culture and
turn IBM into the world’s premier
knowledge management company.
We believe very strongly that the
age-old levers of competition — labor,
capital and land — are being supplemented
by knowledge, and that the most
successful companies in the future
will be those that learn how to exploit
knowledge — knowledge about customer
behavior, markets, economies, technology
— faster and more effectively than their
competitors. They will use knowledge
to adapt quickly — seizing opportunities
and improving products and services,
of course, but just as important, renewing
the way they define themselves, think
and operate.
To support the rapid movement of
ideas and knowledge across IBM,
we’re completing a more than $400
million upgrade of our information
technology infrastructure, including
the largest single-company rollout
ever of groupware — to 240,000 Lotus
Notes users. We have created new
compensation and rewards systems
that foster a high-performance culture
based on speed of execution and team-
work. Our knowledge management
work is also paying off in prosaic
areas, such as procurement. Knowing
at all times the status of supply and
demand of purchased goods has
allowed us to leverage our worldwide
volumes and negotiate more effectively,
saving IBM $4.2 billion since 1995.
capital
investments
($ in billions)
93 94 95 96 97
3.1
3.2
4.7
5.9
6.8
research
and development
investments
($ in billions)
6.1
7.5
5.3 5.2 5.5
8IBM1997annualreport
93 94 95 96 97