{"id":34777,"date":"2019-03-21T09:33:19","date_gmt":"2019-03-21T09:33:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/?p=34777"},"modified":"2019-03-27T12:41:26","modified_gmt":"2019-03-27T12:41:26","slug":"how-cios-can-optimise-it-costs-and-stop-budget-cutting-requests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/2019\/03\/21\/how-cios-can-optimise-it-costs-and-stop-budget-cutting-requests\/","title":{"rendered":"How CIOs can\u00a0optimise\u00a0IT costs and stop budget cutting requests"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cA proactive attitude from a CIO will provide evidence that IT is able to\u00a0manage\u00a0budget efficiently and stop repeating requests by stakeholders to deliver more with less,\u201d says Gartner Senior Director\u00a0Analyst\u00a0James Anderson<\/a>,\u00a0at\u00a0Gartner Symposium\/ITxpo<\/a>\u00a0in Dubai.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

CIOs must establish a culture of proactive IT cost optimisation to strengthen their position with their CEO and stakeholders.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to reduce the IT budget\u201d is a sentence that CIOs despise, but hear too often. When they try to defend the cost in front of the CEO and other non-IT executives, all they see is blank expressions, followed by the request to \u2018just make it happen\u2019 and ensure that all services are nevertheless running smoothly.<\/p>\n

CIOs must showcase that they have evidence of a proactive strategy of continued cost optimisation.<\/p>\n

Many business leaders still view IT as an opaque silo of function and spending.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is the role of the CIO to show to stakeholders how certain cuts will impact services and where savings are possible,\u201d said\u00a0Gartner Senior Director\u00a0Analyst\u00a0James Anderson<\/a>\u00a0at\u00a0Gartner Symposium\/ITxpo<\/a>\u00a0in Dubai.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis proactive attitude from the CIO will provide evidence that IT is able to\u00a0manage\u00a0budget efficiently and stop repeating requests by stakeholders to deliver more with less.\u201d<\/p>\n

To effectively communicate their IT cost\u00a0optimisation<\/a>\u00a0vision and strategy to non-IT decision makers, CIOs must showcase that they have evidence of a proactive strategy of continued cost optimisation. This can be done in several steps and should be adapted accordingly with business and stakeholder priorities.<\/p>\n

Step No. 1: Establish a baseline<\/strong><\/p>\n

Establish a baseline for the IT organisation. It is difficult to demonstrate progress without a fixed starting point. Work with the CFO and CEO and decide where IT needs to effectively allocate resources to initiatives that will show the best value for the organisation. Without data, there are only opinions to base a strategic advantage or disadvantage of IT investment.<\/p>\n

Step No. 2: Identify opportunities<\/strong><\/p>\n

Split the organisation\u2019s IT spending and costs to a granular level and compare the data points to companies within the vertical industry for valuable insights.\u00a0Operational expenses<\/a>\u00a0much higher than the industry average means that there could be room for cost optimisation. On the other hand, comparatively low spending for functions such as the IT service desk mean that cuts in this area might impact service quality.<\/p>\n

Step No. 3: Establish governance<\/strong><\/p>\n

In general, CIOs have likely been engaged in several cost optimisation initiative discussions. The most important task is to manage all ideas proactively via a cost optimisation government team and evaluate the potential.<\/p>\n

Some ideas might result in modest savings, because they only reduce IT costs, while others will impact business spending and revenue. \u201cWhen IT introduces a new payment model that is easier to maintain and improves\u00a0customer experience<\/a>\u00a0at the same time, it is not only cost-effective, but also enables possible new business models,\u201d Anderson said.<\/p>\n

Step No. 4: Start with quick wins<\/strong><\/p>\n

Team up with a\u00a0trusted<\/a>\u00a0business-unit leader, communicate expectations for what is to be accomplished and explain how IT can support the goals of the business unit. The best way to ensure organisational buy-in for a proactive cost optimisation strategy is to showcase a portfolio of quick wins – projects or changes that achieve immediate cash savings without costing anything or are entirely cash-positive without requiring much spending.<\/p>\n

After completing a few of the projects, present the portfolio to the CEO and other stakeholders.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe portfolio is very important. It clearly showcases the vision and strategy of the CIO regarding cost reduction and its results within the business,\u201d Anderson said. \u201cIt moves the CIO and IT from speculating what the savings could be to demonstrating a foundation of real savings. In the end this vision matters to many stakeholders, including the CEO and the CFO.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cA proactive attitude from a CIO will provide evidence that IT is able to\u00a0manage\u00a0budget efficiently and stop repeating requests by stakeholders to deliver more with less,\u201d says Gartner Senior Director\u00a0Analyst\u00a0James Anderson,\u00a0at\u00a0Gartner Symposium\/ITxpo\u00a0in Dubai. CIOs must establish a culture of proactive IT cost optimisation to strengthen their position with their CEO and stakeholders. \u201cWe need to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":34781,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[139,809,3629,185,79],"tags":[8357,155,420,202,8356,1253,209,8355,1254,8358,184],"class_list":["post-34777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-industry-expert","category-more-news","category-newsletter","category-uae","category-used","tag-analyst","tag-cio","tag-dubai","tag-gartner","tag-gartner-analyst","tag-gartner-symposium","tag-it","tag-it-budget","tag-itxpo","tag-james-anderson","tag-uae"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34777"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34777\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34825,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34777\/revisions\/34825"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}