In today’s challenging economy, companies are placing more pressure than ever on their IT professionals to demonstrate the value of their IT investments. They are looking for real business value—how does the investment align with the overall business strategy? How will the investment improve the financial health of the organization? Where should a company start? The following tips offer some suggestions for companies striving to maximize the value of their IT investments.
- IT leadership is critical regardless of the size of your organization. When hiring an IT leader, look for an IT business-focused person rather than an IT expert. This individual should have a seat at the strategic planning table in order to keep up with the complex business changes that occur from year-to-year. This will enable them to enhance the IT planning and budgeting process to reflect the changes which have or will occur in the business.
- Refresh legacy systems that are no longer supported. These systems generally require maintaining a large development staff to keep these systems up and running. From a budget standpoint, legacy systems appear to cost less because there is no technology line item. But the costs are hidden in your overhead costs for staffing and these can be quite significant.
- Streamline your technology, operating systems, PCs and platforms. This reduces the number of subject matter experts you will need to maintain and support those systems.
- Standardize your processes. If everyone follows the same process and your employees have the ability to move to any location and work, this reduces training costs and streamlines the reporting back to the corporate office.
- Centralize your IT systems. If your company is a multi-site company, focus on centralizing all of your IT systems and push them out to your remote offices. This not only centralizes the support of those systems, but also reduces the need for physical data centers in multiple locations and the need to travel to those locations when upgrades are needed.
- Communicate your initiatives. The value of technology in your business is not easily recognized by everyone. IT leaders need to communicate on a regular basis what their current initiatives are and how they will benefit the business and drive profits. Once technology has been implemented, take it a step further and report how the investment improved the overall performance of the business. In other words, IT should be viewed as a business within your business—a strategic partner that provides the technology drivers to meet the goals of the organization.
