HOW THINGS CHANGE. Notions of Y2K survival and dot-com delirium are just fond memories as IT professionals this year faced the challenging tasks of cutting costs, increasing productivity, and making an instant profit -- all during a time of a drastic economic downturn with an ominous backdrop of international terrorism. But the many admirable organizations that InfoWorld's senior editorial team named to the 2001 InfoWorld 100 are tackling these challenges head-on, finding innovative ways to use technology to meet some or all of their business and financial goals.

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Looking at last year's top dot-com picks, such as the now-defunct Garden.com, Utility.com, and Petopia.com, it is clear that what determines whether a business is successful today in the information technology area is drastically different than a year ago. Gone are the days of e-business plans with promises of future profits and technology with only marketingspeak to back them up. Now the criteria for successful IT projects are those that allow for greater productivity and profit, in the midst of fewer employees and smaller budgets.

"Companies should only invest in technologies that make the business operate effectively now," says David Cooperstein, research director at Forrester Research in Cambridge, Mass. "You're not just trying to figure out what to do with it later, but focusing on the ROI and not the marketing benefit of the technology."

"Productivity is the real silver bullet in making a technology investment pay off during these difficult economic times," adds Dana Gardner, research director of messaging and collaboration services at Aberdeen Group in Boston. Gardner believes that using technology to streamline business processes between suppliers, partners, and customers is "one of the surest ways of increasing productivity and getting a lot of bang for the buck."

According to a Forrester Research report entitled "Tech Recovery in 2003: A Different Beast," "apps like supply-chain planning, e-procurement, and supplier relationship management are maturing to the point where mainstream users can finally capture some of the promised gains."

Back to reality

As companies search for realistic, practical ways to save and make money, they are looking to IT to make it happen.

In fact, the fate of the entire national economy may rest on IT's shoulders. According to the Forrester Research report, "During previous recessions, IT was a small fraction of industrial America -- so it was sheltered from economic downturns. But high-tech has grown up, now representing a more significant piece of the gross domestic product. The sector's recovery is now closely tied to the overall U.S. economy."

One of the most important ways IT professionals are getting a leg up on this drooping economy is through ever-pervasive e-business. Last year's InfoWorld 100, called the E-Business 100, was focused on how to build a successful e-business. But this year e-business is such an integral part of any company that it is redundant to use the term to categorize organizations. Companies across all industries, as exemplified by some of our top picks, such as Covisint, DaimlerChrysler, Dow Chemical, Miller Electric, and Cox Communications, are all using the Internet to streamline business processes inside and out.

"One of the key drivers of IT investment over the next couple of years will be the mainstreaming of Internet technology," says David Schatsky, research director at Jupiter Media Metrix in New York. "The Internet is obviously a mass-consumer phenomenon, but it's becoming a mass-business phenomenon as large enterprises have adopted standard Internet protocols and technologies used to improve internal processes and external processes."

Aberdeen Group's Gardner agrees. "This year there's a more holistic approach to the Internet," she says.

"It's not a panacea, but it's an enabling technology for vast improvement and efficiency that leads to higher productivity. ... Successful companies are ones that use the Internet to their advantage to cut costs, to reach customers and partners in new ways, and to use IP internally to integrate and homogenize by bringing systems in harmony with a common network approach," Gardner says.

Innovation lives on

According to experts, the silver lining to these recessionary times is that technological innovation will thrive like never before. An economic downturn does not sound the death knell for technological innovation -- quite the opposite, as revealed by the IT projects undertaken by the companies on this year's InfoWorld 100. Creativity is a necessary means to combat the issues of fewer employees with larger workloads, shrinking e-business budgets, and shorter time lines.

According to Tim Bajarin, president of Creative Strategies in Campbell, Calif., these trying times present the opportunity to "go back to the roots of innovation."

"We were so caught up in the dot-com boom that we got away from innovation, which was the heart of the industry growth in the first place," Bajarin says. "With the recession, we are going to see lots of new products coming out."

One of the best ways for a company to stay innovative, according to Jeffrey Swartz, president and CEO of Current Analysis in Sterling, Va., is to keep close tabs on your customers, whether they be end-users, consumers, businesses, suppliers, or partners.

"During a down economy, your customers are in the same boat you are," Swartz says. "So you need to be sure your customer base is secure and you're doing what you need to do to provide support to them."

The economy is not the only catalyst for innovation. The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks brought a new emphasis on and demand for protective technologies.

"It's much like how the Y2K investments were. Network security and redundancy are like insurance -- you have to have it," Swartz says.

The 2001 InfoWorld 100 organizations illustrate that innovation is alive and well, despite burdensome obstacles. We commend these top businesses and their IT professionals and will continue to follow them during the rest of this year and next, taking a look at how their strategies change over time.

Return to our InfoWorld 100 package.

To nominate an outstanding IT project for the 2002 InfoWorld 100, send an e-mail to InfoWorld editors at InfoWorld100@infoworld.com. Your nomination should include the company's name, the name of the project leader, and a thorough description of the IT project and the business benefits realized from that project. Only projects completed between October 2001 and October 2002 will be considered.