IT Value Management

In a small or midsized business, just about every IT department asks for more funding. And just about everybody else wants to cut IT costs.

We're experts at helping organizations strike the balance between these two conflicting views. The thing that makes the difference is our ability to design very lean, efficient IT architectures that provide you with everything you need and nothing you don't. And you can rest assured that we'll communicate each IT service to you, in non-technical language, and in a manner that demonstrates the following:

• What the service delivers in business terms.
• What the cost to the organization is.
• What the alternatives are.
• What risks or constraints would exist if the service was cut back or canceled.

We take the same attitude to helping our clients evergreen their IT estate. We often find that smaller companies want to try to defer IT spend, for instance by delaying upgrades, or to avoid it altogether, such as by purchasing cheaper consumer-class laptops instead of business laptops. We expect to be challenged on these items. Ultimately, it's your call of course. But we'll provide you with the pros and cons, and in the event that we think you're running an unacceptable risk as a result we'll inform you and allow you to assess the decision on the basis of the whole facts.

Shifting to an IT value-based culture

One of the biggest challenges for a growing business is the shift that's required from a cost-based IT culture to a more mature value-based culture. This involves four major areas of change:

• Focusing on IT based on the value it delivers, not on where costs can be cut.
• Shifting thinking about IT from a tactical "make it work" scope to a more strategic "make it drive business value" one.
• Tracking return on the IT investment portfolio and not just unit costs or arbitrary metrics like IT spend as a percentage of budget.
• Managing IT using a relationship management model, not a basic account management model.

Running IT like a business

The business executives and workforce aren't going to learn the technicalities of how their multiple IT systems work, so you need an IT partner that will run IT like a business, manage it in line with best practices and communicate everything about IT - performance, risks, requirements, and projects - to you in straightforward business terms. If your IT department or service provider can't do this, you have no means of achieving value from your IT investment. Simply put, IT has to justify its seat at the table.

The more mature your IT service management, and the more proactive your service provider in finding new, innovative solutions, the easier it is to release value from your IT investments. To take the first step, please get in touch.