Sounds like a pretty straightforward question and one that many people and companies would answer “yes” or “of course” to since technology is so pervasive in all aspects of our business and personal lives. But, this term is less subjective than you might think in terms of business and has been given some specific attributes that help define whether a company is “IT Savvy” or not.

The business definition of the term is fully defined and explained in the book IT Savvy: What Top Executives Must Know to Go from Pain to Gain by Peter Weill and Jeanne W. Ross. As Weill and Ross explain in the book, being “IT Savvy refers to the planned, ongoing use of a set of interlocking business practices and competencies that collectively derive superior value from IT investments”.

For most hard core technologists this definition will seem a little too vague and consultant-ese to really apply to the day to day wok in IT but Weill and Ross go into much more detail on their definition and provide a practical framework in which to think about IT and its support of a business.

Weill and Ross go on to further highlight five characteristics of an “IT Savvy” company:

1. IT for Internal and External Communication – Intensity of electronic communications media such as e-mail, intranets, and wireless devices for internal and external communications and work practices.
2. Internet Use - Internet based architectures (i.e. open) for key functions like sales force management, employee performance measurements, training and post-sales customer support.
3. Digital Transactions – High percentage of digitized transaction executed with both suppliers and customers.
4. Company-wide IT Skills - Technical and business skills of IT people, IT skills of business people and ability to hire skilled IT people.
5. Management Involvement – The degree of senior management commitment to IT projects and the degree of business unit involvement in IT decisions.

Weill and Ross also layout some well defined categories of IT investments and conclude that the most IT Savvy companies are investing more in the Strategic and Informational areas of IT than their competition.

1. Strategic - used to gain competitive advantage by supporting entry into new markets or by helping to develop new products services or business processes.
2. Informational - provide information for purposes such as accounting, reporting, compliance, communication, or analysis
3. Transactional – investments that are primarily used to cut costs or increase the throughput for the same cost.
4. Infrastructure - shared IT service s used by multiple applications (servers, networks, laptops, customer databases,)

Considering these high-level attributes would you consider your organization IT savvy?