Vendors of IT services would be wise to pay close attention to quality and costs this year as 93% of the manufacturers who responded to a recent study named those two attributes as essential components of any IT product. IT product investment in the areas of supply chain, customer chain and product development chain management will continue according to Manufacturing Insights' newest survey Asia/Pacific (Excluding Japan) Manufacturing Firms' Business and IT Priorities, 2005.
"Despite the ongoing tough economic and business environments, the majority of Asia/ Pacific (excluding Japan) manufacturers remain generally optimistic about business prospects for their organizations in 2005 and many are keen to strengthen their competitiveness by streamlining their operations," observes Ng Buck-Seng, associate director, Asia/Pacific manufacturing research, Framingham, Ma.-based Manufacturing Insights. "There is good reason for IT vendors to cheer as one third of survey respondents reported a planned increase to their total external IT budgets from 2005 to 2006. Top IT investment projects for the coming year will be those that help companies to manage inventory more effectively, improve demand forecasting, and reduce manufacturing and total supply chain costs."
According to the survey, external IT spending by manufacturers will be in the areas of disaster recovery, Web services, application consolidation/standardization and server consolidation/standardization,
Data was drawn from 1,616 companies with more than 100 employees in different manufacturing vertical markets across eight countries: China, India, Taiwan, Korea, Australia, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore.
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