The weight of I.T.

[steveA]

When it comes to CAD and information systems, I guess I am somewhat regressive. I am currently trying to understand why our overhead keeps creeping upward and our profitability keeps creeping downward. There are a few culprits, like older principals, who's valueable time has become purely overhead, and higher insurance premiums, but I keep coming around to our massive I.T. budget and the small army of people we have that spends it. This is what bugs me: Over the years our fees haven't changed much , the "hours per drawing" hasn't changed much , overhead has increased , quality of work has not improved or if it has , it has not been a function of CAD. What has improved is that we are much more facile at providing clients renderings during the design process. I know this is not a simple issue, but I wanted to know what your thoughts were. Are we hostages to the computer industry?