In today's business environment, success is driven by the need to support the transactional and knowledge processes used within and across the organisation in the quickest and most effective way possible.

A recent International Conference of Chief Information Officers and IT Directors in food retailing positioned ‘Improving Business Processes’ at the top of their current agenda, ahead of gaining competitive advantage, cost control and innovation. One has only to compare the performance of organisations that use IT effectively with those who do not to see how important IT is to the business: take the contrasting fortunes of UK supermarkets Tesco, which has made widespread use of IT to improve business performance, and the merged Morrison/Safeway chains, where significant IT issues, particularly around the accounting solution, have thrown doubt on the potential success of the merged organisations.