Success in cost optimization depends on taking a strategic approach. IT leaders seek to maximize savings through function-specific and enterprise-wide programs. This continuous, business-focused approach maximizes business value while reducing costs.
Based on Gartner's research and experience with various companies, we have created a summary of IT spending best practices to share with you. We hope you can understand the key stages, resources, and people necessary to plan and execute an effective cost optimization initiative.
Best practices for IT spend optimization:
Set a Reference Point
- Establish the starting point by evaluating the organization's current technology spending and its level of development. Tasks include understanding the total cost of IT and creating a base case.
- Defines the investment strategy and resource allocation.
- Reviews current cost optimization activity, understands tool frequency and process usage.
- Develop a plan to monitor and measure progress on a regular basis.
Identify Opportunities
- Find opportunities and create a strategy to take advantage of them. Tasks include goal setting, tracking, and approaches to gain benefits.
- Identify areas of optimization and develop a capture strategy.
- Examine how spending is distributed across different categories and uncover opportunities where IT has control (IT supply) or influence (IT demand) over costs.
- Implement rapid improvements by renegotiating and consolidating contracts with existing suppliers to reduce unit costs.
Implementation
Achieve success and gain acceptance in the organization.
- Establishes a program office to oversee IT Cost Optimization (ITCO) initiatives.
- Encourage productive collaboration between different business units to maximize success.
- Prepare a compelling board presentation with a well-designed plan and a clearly articulated story.
- Work with the IT team to incorporate robust security and risk review that mitigates vulnerability hazards.
Institutionalization
Turn benefits into reality and review metrics to strengthen spending constraints.
- Review the ITCO roadmap and schedule.
- Evaluates initiatives where actual savings do not meet expectations; addresses incremental investment to achieve identified benefits.
- Prepare reports that reflect budget and spending without the ITCO program.
- Explore additional areas of maturity in IT financial management to identify other IT cost optimization opportunities.
Supervision and Improvement
Monitors, expands, and adjusts resource allocation to implement process improvements.
- Review optimization focus areas: Reevaluate baseline results and realized value. Compare progress against benchmarks and highlight successes to increase stakeholder buy-in.
- Use analytics to drive insights and optimize cloud cost management.
- IT Oversight as an Enabler: Focus on implementing improvements.
This way, you can take a more strategic and programmatic approach to IT cost optimization. We invite you to think of Madata as a strategic IT ally in your organization.
Source: GARTNER