During the time when we entered the year 2000, a lot of people were worried on the "millennium bugs", which was a situation whereby computers might not perform their normal operations due to the 2-digit allocation for the year. Those who worried are the ones who have lot of computers or information technology (IT) infrastructure (as investment), like those in the banking section, telecommunication section, etc. Those who were not worried are those who did not invest too much on IT infrastructure.
Some companies performed some anticipation by spending a lot of money to prevent such "accident" to happen. Companies who offered software and hardware solution, consultation and training, were glooming. Those who had invested a lot of money on IT infrastructure were again spending some more money to handle this issue, to ensure that they can escape from the "accident". However, those who did not spend too much money on IT infrastructure, were not as panic as them and did not need to spend so much money compared to them who had invested a lot on IT infrastructure.
During the seconds entering the year 2000, all people were stressful. While entering the year 2000, however, everything was working just fine, not like everyone has expected or speculated. Lastly, all those IT consultants, and those "non-millennium bugs" hardware and software were counting all the earnings they get on the year of 2000. :)
What is interesting from that event? It is not easy to invest on IT, it's not easy to predict the IT's future, and it's not easy to get good IT staff. Doesn't it cause a dilemma on IT investment? A lot of people are saying that you'll be shrinking if you're not using IT, looks like IT is a "secret weapon". However, it might not be true; in fact, I always say that IT can be a "secret enemy". The analogy is very simple, if we are fighting thieves, we can just use a sword or a gun, no need to use a nuclear bomb, for instance. :) Because if we use a nuclear bomb, not only the thieves, but we will also be diminished.
Therefore, to invest on IT, we need to consider a lot of things, such as:
However, after the investment has been done, there are still a lot of things we need to consider, such as:
Some more, if we look into the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) case, a lot of companies are implementing it. But how optimal they are using it? Especially since ERP now is going to an "expired" state. Also if we look into the dot com case. A lot of dot com companies are established, but a lot of them are also vanished. A lot of "network shops" (warung network, or "warnet" in Indonesian) are established, but still, "warung tegal" or "warteg" (small coffee shops) are more benefit. Many people now say that every company must head to B2C and B2B, however, we still need to think about it carefully.