CIOs Need to Adjust Their Technology Portfolio Management Perspectives
Steven Bandrowczak, the Nortel CIO,
wants to reduce his software application portfolio from 1,100
titles down to 100 over an 18 month period. (Read
Andy McCue's ZDNet/Asia article.) According to Bandrowczak, "When
I came we had a lot of projects not necessarily 100 per cent aligned
to key initiatives.” Great quote, Steven...
I'm sorry, but that pretty much sounds to me like corporate-speak for: "We were paying for a whole lot of useless projects." Don't feel bad, Steven, most of us are likely floating around on that same leaky pontoon.
When it comes to software asset management, we've found that a majority of companies could benefit from some
serious licensing, support, and maintenance house-cleaning.
Unfortunately, it isn't going to happen until we take a good look at
changing the status quo.
If you could reduce the costs of IT assets while continuing to deliver the same-or even better-services, would you take action? Read on to discover some of the key reasons technology asset management and portfolio management initiatives fail--or, even better, succeed.
I don't think it's any secret that the
core responsibilities of a CIO have been gradually changing over the
past decade. Business tech life has evolved since the 80's and 90's
(big surprise, right?). The days of barely-monitored tech spending
are over and intelligent C-suite executives are now (or they better
be) looking for the genuine life cycle business value in all tech
investments—including project management.
"You get what you pay for so start paying for only products, functionality, and services you genuinely need!"
CIOs can no longer survive solely on
their tech backgrounds. Instead, we need to begin building our
credibility as business process experts while downplaying those
“techie” roots. The traditional tech operations group is still
far behind most business units when it comes to synchronizing our
efforts with the strategic (cost/benefit) side of the enterprise.
Statistically, fewer than 2% of companies have demonstrated a solid
functional relationship between their tech sides and their business
sides. Guess why we over-spend on tech projects...
When it comes to improving the
technology portfolio management initiative, virtually ANY company can
achieve significant cost and risk reductions with very little up
front investment. Savings of as much as 30% of the IT software budget
are well in line with this concept. Additional savings in tech
support and maintenance are also just shy of no-brainer process
improvements to those companies that are seriously interested in a
more effective ROIC.
Finally, a well-thought-out tech
portfolio management initiative can bring enormous savings in a
matter of weeks—not years. A substantial key to potential success
is that your initiative should be based on value, NOT based on some
costly silver bullet proprietary vendor solution. The vast majority
of benefit from ITPM initiatives in nearly every enterprise can be
found in simply re-envisioning life cycle management.
In this case;
in this time; plugging a good measure of common sense into the
initiative can go a very long way toward converting tech costs and
risks into improved bottom line delivered value for business technology goods and services investments.
After all: Who IS the customer in these relationships?
