Cost Reductions Solutions – IT Department
Global IT spend is projected to reach $3.5 trillion this year, according to Gartner. This projection includes all enterprise hardware, software services, and telecommunication services.
Those trillions of dollars are 1.4% more than what the research group projected spending would look like in last quarter’s report, and a 2.4% increase over actual spending last year.
Certainly, the reasons are many for this increase in spending, from the executive getting behind on the implementation of new technology that promises more efficiency and better management of their I.T Infrastructure, or a new service model, that has swept the industry in the last decade, service model’s like offshore outsourcing, which in many cases company has realized that offshoring promised more than it could deliver and the exchange of return was more than they bargained for, costing companies inefficiency that when put in monetary value was more than the cost savings.
Methods and Activities of Cost Savings within I.T. Department
Some examples of Major change include:
Centralizing IT Management and Operations
Establishing sound IT Governance
Standardizing Systems Life Cycle Processes
Outsourcing systems and service delivery
Infrastructure consolidation
- Major change – Impacting multiple areas and requires major changes and in some cases the changes goes across the organization. These transformational changes an IT organization can undertake to create significant efficiencies in the way it manages investments and related operations and support functions. However, because the scale of change required for most of these efficiency agents, the ability to take advantage of these opportunities typically lies in the hand of a few with sufficient power and control within an organization to implement these changes.
Operational – In contrast to Major change category and the select few who can implement those changes, operational cost savings can be implemented by a greater number of people. These opportunities related to a much larger extent on the specific operations and support approaches an organization uses to managed their IT services and assets.
Some examples operational change activities include:
Improving hardware and software requisition control
Consolidating management method and support tools
Utilizing virtualization
Enhancing hardware and software asset management
Enhancing IT Contract Management
Tactical – These represent a collection of I.T cost reductions activities that can be implemented with much less effort than the Major change and Operational cost savings, and can be implemented by a wide range of individual within an IT organization. Simply put, these activities focus heavily on simple and immediate ways to reduce acquisition cost of IT hardware, software, and related support.
Phases of Cost Savings Initiatives
SAF international’s proven system from documenting to evaluating to implementing the cost reduction system is well tested, and have resulted in major cost savings for our clients.
Though our system and processes are never a cookie cutter (and they can’t be) as every client is different, from the industry it functions in to its culture.
From high-level the steps of cost savings at a minimum should include:
Documenting the current as is infrastructure
Evaluating where the good costs and bad costs are
Evaluating where good savings and bad savings are
Determining areas of cost savings
Determining the complexity, savings potential, savings frequency (One time or ongoing)
Decide on which opportunities to undertake
Creating clear objectives of the initiative
And finally initiate a project based on clear deliverables (Project and Product)