About the Enterprise System Spectator

I am co-founder and President of Strativa, a business consulting firm in Southern California that focuses on business strategy, IT strategy, process improvement, and IT decision-making. I am also the President of Computer Economics, an IT research and advisory firm, founded in 1979. You can read my bio on Strativa's management page: Frank Scavo.

I launched this blog in May, 2002 as one of the first tech blogs. I started it to provide a forum for my observations on enterprise systems, the vendors that provide them, and the experiences of companies that implement them. This blog represents my views alone, and receives no sponsorship from vendors.

What is an enterprise system? I define it broadly as a software application or suite of applications that are implemented across multiple business functions. Enterprise systems include applications such as enterprise resource planning (ERP), supply chain management, customer relationship management (CRM), business intelligence, product lifecycle management (PLM), enterprise asset management (EAM), as well as other emerging applications. Essentially, an enterprise system is a business application that serves users across multiple groups, departments, or business units.

I am particularly interested in how companies achieve benefits from information technology. Over the past decade, companies have made enormous investments in IT, often with limited results. What are the lessons learned, and what can business leaders do to improve their chances of success?

How to Follow the Spectator
If you find this blog interesting, you can sign up for a free periodic e-mail of recent posts (sent out once or twice a month, at the most). Over 2,000 readers have done so already. Just enter your e-mail address in the right hand column where indicated. Be assured that I take the issue of spam very seriously. I promise that (1) your e-mail address will not be shared with anyone else, and (2) you can easily unsubscribe with one-click any time, no questions asked.

You can also subscribe via RSS feed, using any news reader.

You can also follow me on Twitter, where I am @fscavo.

If you have thoughts or contrary opinions that you would like to share, feel free to comment on any recent post. Or, if you have news, insights, or gossip that you think I'd be interested in, please drop me an e-mail. My address is in the right hand column. I honor all requests for confidentiality.

Thanks for visiting!