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The Business Advantages of Information Technology
IT delivers many advantages to the organization that manages it effectively. From cost savings and improved productivity to greater business intelligence and decision-making capabilities, every organization can benefit from IT. However, these days, business is putting great pressure on IT to cut costs and deliver even more business value. Here are just a few of the reports in our library that can help IT executives reduce IT spending and improve business value.
IT Staffing Ratios: Benchmarking Metrics and Analysis for 13 Key IT Functions (CE-5003)
Use this report to determine where you can most effectively eliminate staff.
Opportunities & Challenges in IT Cost Reduction (IN-6308)
Use the included Cost Reduction Analysis Tool to find the best cost cutting steps for your organization.
Maximizing Your IT Investments: A Step-by-Step Guide (IN-6701)
Use this report to ensure that IT spending goes where it will deliver the most value to the business.
IT Strategy and Architecture: Creating an Enterprise Model to Support IT Strategic Planning (BG-0051)
Use this report to develop a business-aligned IT strategy that demonstrates IT's value to the organization.
Creating Self-Funding Projects
There are financial actions that can be taken as well. One simple method that some executives have used is to develop and tightly control key performance indicators (KPIs). If KPIs are monitored closely and processes are improved, executives can reduce IT spending by up to 17 percent. If this is done while aligning IT with the business, the operational savings are less but the monies spent on approved projects are better spent. Nonetheless, IT executives will have reduced costs by 10 percent and could apply half of that savings to self-fund other process improvements.
Not all companies do a good job of asset management. RFG has found that
companies can reduce their IT asset spending by up to 10 percent through
improvements in this process. Moreover, if they do have good asset management processes, they can make further gains by leasing equipment. RFG has also found executives can take advantage of a number of different asset swap, funding, and leasing options currently available. Finance and IT executives should discuss these options with leasers such as HPFS and IGF and determine which ones might help them conserve cash, reduce the overall spending, and release funds for IT improvements.
from Creating Self-Funding Projects (EX-9284)
IT Headcount Planning
In small organizations, application development staff members comprise 22% of the total IT staff headcount at the median. At the 25th percentile they make up 13% of the total IT staff, and at the 75th percentile they comprise 40%. At medium companies, the median ratio is 19%, the 25th percentile ratio is 12%, and the 75th percentile ratio is 28%. At large companies, the median ratio is 28%, the 25th percentile is 17%, and the 75th percentile is 37%.
IT Staffing Ratios: Benchmarking Metrics and Analysis for 13 Key IT Functions (CE-5003)
Service-Oriented Architecture
During a SOA implementation, design decisions will be made that will either constrain or enable future
phases. The most common issue here is the design of the services themselves.
If a bottom-up, technology-driven analysis is chosen (as might be the case where SOA is introduced to
satisfy an application integration requirement) then services are most likely to be defined as a simple
virtualisation of the functionality of the existing application portfolio. This is unlikely to be a good match
with business requirements, leading to poor reuse of services in later developments. However, if a purely
top-down approach is taken by analysing current and planned processes, then a good business fit and reuse
might be achieved at the expense of performance issues and difficulties in mapping the required services
to available application functionality.
Organisations should adopt a deployment methodology that guides them through this critical design stage.
from SOA Platforms: Software Infrastructure Requirements for Successful SOA Deployments (BG-0041)
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