Does IT investment alone improve performance?

There was a very good article recently at McKinseyQuarterly.com entitled, “Does IT improve performance?”  The premise of the article was that the productivity increase resulting from IT spending was only experienced in companies with sound IT governance practices in place.  Those companies in the 75th percentile and above in their management practices score AND in the 75th percentile and above in Intensity of IT deployment yielded at least a 20% increase in total factor productivity.

The abstract to the article can be found here.  This report was based on a study of 100 companies in France, Germany, United Kingdom, and the United States.  This is very strong independent information for those needing to justify an IT governance or service improvement projects within your company.