Rent-A-Center isn’t alone. Many corporations are beginning to peel apart these two distinct budgeting subsets. “There has been a real bifurcation under way,” explains John Baschab, co-author of The Executive's Guide to Information Technology (Wiley, 2007). “IT departments are breaking the cost of new projects out from ‘lights-on costs,’ a term I use for the funding required just to run the IT department with no new initiatives. There is now a - John Baschab

“Clearly, getting a degree from a well-known school is important and valued. I believe that degrees are worth at least a 20% premium, ” says Jon Piot, a president at Technisource, a St. Louis-based IT and engineering services provider. - JON PIOT

Spending by companies on their IT departments has reached that of the days prior to 2000, said John Baschab, author of The Executive's Guide to Information Technology and president of the management services division of Technisource. - John Baschab and David McLaughlin

With Jon Piot, president of the Solutions Group for Technisource, a provider of specialized information technology and engineering services to large and mid-sized companies and organizations throughout the United States, and John Baschab, president of the company's Management Services Division. The co-authors of "The Executives' Guide to Information Technology" (Wiley 2003), they recently updated it with a second edition released this spring. - Baschab & Piot

It wasn't about deploying a system that would be the best fit for Carvel and Cinnabon, Hough said. "It was about installing one that in light of Focus 5 would scale to supporting multiple brands and locations and be sufficiently flexible for us to plug and unplug operating companies. We did not want to reinvent the wheel every year." - Rob Hough

“If you expect franchisees to spend 1,000 dollars, you better prove he can get back $1,001,” says Rob Hough, Atlanta principal for Technisource, an IT firm that represents FOCUS Brands. - Rob Hough

Integrating IT into the core business unit didn't occur overnight, Hough said. Instead, that trust built through a series of successful projects that showed IT could deliver value to the business. "IT is rocket science, but, at the end of the day, it's also customer service," Hough said. "Customer service is listening to the business and reacting accordingly." - Rob Hough