Special Paper: ROI Stewardship

We're pleased to bring you an exclusive download from our long-standing associate, Greenwich Technology Partners. (GTP works with us to build the quarterly Network Computing IT Exam.) This special paper, "Taking Financial Stewardship of Your Network," was written by Shally Bansal Stanley and will show you how to establish strict business justification before you set out on a new technological initiative. Here's a brief excerpt.

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.

• Download paper as PDF (110k)
• Download paper as Word document (76k)