Special Paper: ROI Stewardship

With IT budgets for 2002 reduced as much as 40 and 50 percent from the 2001 actual spend, the challenge is making sure you save enough money before you run out of money.

Organizations that have done this successfully break the problem into three distinct pieces. First they FIX cost inefficiencies in their existing infrastructure. Second they PLAN changes to the infrastructure so that they are consistent with the cost reduction and containment efforts begun in step one. Lastly they GUARANTEE that their infrastructures continue to be cost effective and that they do not evolve away from their goals and targets.

Maintaining financial stewardship demands strict business justification for new initiatives before they are begun. Not after the fact. Instead of being customer focused and providing new services that your users request, you now have to determine if the service is necessary and is worth the cost.

We will be focusing on the first of these steps in the article as it is usually the most time and resource intensive and is the one the produces the near-term results that are required by today??s businesses.