CIOs always complaint the shortage of funds in IT department, as an auxiliary department of an enterprise, CIOS can seldom get enough support from enterprises, including human resources and funds, so here are the ways for helping CIOs to save costs.
IT managers can cut the expenditure and operating costs through a variety of ways, thus to reduce about 5% of the IT budget, or even more. The process and transforming management account for a lot, and we can save a lot from human resources adjustment, outsourcing, as well as capital and technology conversion.
Human Resource Adjustment 每 25%
What's different to the report is the working opportunities in IT industry are actally shrinking, the competition of IT talents is more and more fierce, and the shortage of talents in key areas is expanding. This has brought great pressure to IT managers in setting up and implementing human diversity plan (including hiring new talents, retain talents and re-training, replacing strategy, human resources distribution, and outsourcing).
The current establishment of the new trend requires mangers to hire more staff to
The immediate establishment of this new trend requires management to hire more self-driven staff, they must have resilience, creativity, mobility, independence and good knowledge repertory of ecosystem logic, but not just a group of groovelike technomania.
IT managers should strive to improve the utilization of staff productivity to 70% - 80%. It can be only achieved through cross-functionally training the staff into generalists, retaining consultants or outsourcing. Managers have to determine what tasks should be remained in house and what tasks should be outsourced.
According to the importance of work and the different scopes of customers, although the tasks of construction and operation will be completed by the exterior, but companies still should keep controlling the structure. And others key skills which are acquired, developed and maintained by the interior include project management and the relationship management between users and manufacturers.
IT departments who can manage the relationship between users and vendors, project operation, future strategy and structure will have a certain natural advantages. In addition, good replacing plans and managers are also indispensable.
If managers can concentrate on reshaping the human resource structure, in order to achieve the required mobility and flexibility, then IT will be able to reduce more than 25% human resource costs. Many mangers who are implementing this kind of plan have cut more than 50% operating staff, and 30% information desk staff.
The benefits brought by process improvement
The process improvement can bring high profits to IT departments. They can achieve their goals by dealing with zero value-added projects, adverse SOX (Sarbanes-Oxley Act) compliance process, IT financial management, or miscellaneous procurement process. IT managers should study these matters and respond them into 2008 budget plan process.
Issues such as staff conflicts, culture and personnel integration may be too hot to handle, but there are still many ways to reduce operating expenses through process improvement. To those IT managers in listed companies, SOX compliance process is can save the most costs.
SOX Change 每 20%
The newly promulgated Sarbanes Accounting Standard Document (AS5) can help companies to reduce the cost of compliance. From the prospective of IT, the provision of the new accounting standard that combining all the statute examinations into regular examinations can save a lot for companies. The regular examination plan can be termly implemented, the generated results and reports can be recognized by auditors, business operating departments, various regulatory agencies, or other units which are seeking for confirmation. Through it, companies can save more than 20% compliance costs.
Assets Assessment 每 15%
To assess the comprehensive IT assets through external financial institutions can save a lot of capital and operating expenses. In addition to the traditional financial and leasing services, these companies are willing to provide asset swap, buyback, project financing service and other services.
These institutions can cooperate with enterprises' financial or asset departments, and study out the financial clauses with IT to outline enterprises' demands and strategies. Combing their participation, appropriate finance and IT units, you will be able to completely identify some creative financial opportunities, thereby reducing more than 15% capital and operating expenses.
Furthermore, since many companies don't have a valid asset management process, so many potential PC leasing opportunities which can save 15%purchasing costs have been lost. For example, those companies who don't have strong asset management process and control ability have to put 25% more budgets into broadcasting, PC, PDA and other client devices, in fact, these costs can be cut off from the companies' account books. The problem is due to the reason that those equipments which are needless and out of services have been counted in the software assets.
Therefore, if a company has paid for the software or network but doesn't use it, year after year, these assets will be depreciated to 10% - 15% of the original value, and eventually become zero value. In fact, IT managers can solve this kind of problems and take out the additional expenses in 12 months. Just because this return of investment can be achieved in short order, it is worth to bring it into IT budget.
Strategic Procurement 每 40%
In the perspective of globalization, a company needs to set up a strategic procurement department and process to positively manage contracts and manufacturers, as thus, the company can be transferred from passive transaction into positive state. The conversion of attitude and position can bring positive impact and save 40% expenditure.
Business Management 每 10%
The week link of business management includes the integration and configuration of business and transformation, the management of project and service. The project investment which cannot achieve the expected goal has accounted for the largest proportion.
The investigation shows that the new projects of companies have accounted for 20% to 25% of the IT budget, and more than half the money has been wasted because projects were canceled, failed or cannot achieve the expected business goal. Implementing better strategy of integrating business and IT and project combination management process can reduce this costs.
Through this approach, IT can more effectively provide products and services. Re-adjusting the transformation management process is a good way. An effective transformation management process can reduce the times of changes, improve transformation quality and shorten the time to markets, so that it can reduce more than 5% overall project cost.
Records Management 每 20%
The other aspect of process management is global e-records management and information management. Enterprises are always repeating a lot of data, and in some cases, certain data can even have 50 copies. Those companies which are establishing data samples and copy provisional copies or integrating database into common data warehouse can retrench the storage requirements, shorten work plan cycle, and control the cost and risks of e-discover to a minimum, accordingly to better balance online and archived data.
Most IT managers are very familiar with the technologies which can save companies' costs, but what surprises us is that these managers don't actively promote and apply these technologies. IT managers should take the right measure which can be effective in short order, and save money for 2008 budget.
Greening 每 10%
Greening is one of the most popular topics now. In the past two years, enterprises have gradually been aware of the energy consumption cost in the process of operating data center. The energy cost has become a big issue which is concerned by CEO, CFO and the board from a small problem which is concerned only by the equipment department. The managers should be able to save more than 10% of the energy consumption of the data center.
Modernization 每 40%
Companies also need to solve the cost problem through application and system modernization, platform integration and virtualization. Although many big companies are under the way of developing one or more measures, the cost-effectiveness is not so obvious. Through setting up project loss and profits points, companies should be able to save 30% operating costs.
The really successful projects should not only wholly analyze the problem, but also solve the following key factors:
HP and IBM have launched on and started to obtain results from the quantity and location of data centers, automation, work plans and use of human resources, application's modernization and popularization, quantity of servers, integration and virtualization, storage integration, platform types, sharing, virtualization, energy and cooling, network types and broadband, as well as outsourcing.
Determination of Measurement 每 15%
The last way is process management. This is the essence of cost savings. IT managers should establish effective measurement and well add management. Through rigorous surveillance, management and report of each task, they can reduce the required time. Those IT managers who have improved the managing manner can achieve the ※multiplier§ in order to achieve 10% to 15% cost reduction.
Management persons can re-evaluate manpower allocation and diversification, process improvement projects and data center operations in the planning cycle, and adjust them to bring more and more cost savings. IT managers should firmly grasp these activities, and develop guideline which can help companies to achieve short and long-term goals and strategies with managers in business operation, finance, procurement and other senior managers.
