Welcome to the IT Cost Optimization Research Center.
Begin by downloading our complimentary essential guide
Info-Tech has developed an approach that's based on understanding your business position within the current economic cycle, establishing a corresponding response mode, and identifying key IT cost optimization objectives. These inputs will enable you to target initiatives within and across four focus areas and access relevant blueprints, tools, and templates to achieve the cost optimization goals you have set out and to develop an action plan to achieve them.
IT Cost Optimization Process
Let us help you manage your IT
Talk to an AnalystCost Analysis & Optimization Workshop
Obtain a tailored strategy to meet your cost-optimization goals.
Completion of the IT Spend & Staffing Benchmarking Service is required in advance of this workshop to map your IT spending and generate your industry-specific benchmarks.
Steps
IT Cost Optimization
Mandate
Outcome
- Understand the organization's context
- Articulate the cost optimization mandate
- Clarify IT's position and response mode
Cost Optimization
Goals
- Review your actual IT spending
- Examine peer IT spend benchmarks
- Identify cost-optimization focus areas
- Set concrete IT cost optimization goals
IT Cost Optimization Initiatives Longlist
- Identify potential initiatives for vendor contracts and assets
- Identify potential initiatives for projects and workforce
- Develop an initiatives longlist for evaluation
IT Cost Optimization Roadmap
- Assess initiative feasibility against goals
- Generate a prioritized final shortlist of initiatives that enables goal achievement
- Develop a visual IT cost optimization roadmap
Communicate & Execute
- Develop a communication strategy for engaging stakeholders
- Create an executive presentation to gain IT cost optimization roadmap approval
Be sure to leverage these other Info-Tech services and resources:
IT Spend & Staffing Benchmarking Service
Let us map your IT spend to our four-lens IT cost model and show you how you compare to your industry peers.
Cost Optimization Analysis Concierge Service
A looming recession meets a global pandemic. The result? CFOs start asking IT to cut costs, now.
IT Vendor Contract & IT Cost Optimization Service
Negotiate your next contract with the confidence that Info-Tech experts are getting you a great deal.
Info-Tech LIVE 2022 Keynote: Survive & Thrive During a Recession
Doing what you've always done won't get the same results anymore.
Analyst-Driven IT Cost Optimization Process
Identify Your Organization's Position
Identify your organization's position in the economic cycle. There are a multitude of variables that may impact your current state. For example, it may be that you are tracking against an overall economic market slowdown, or you may be tracking against an industry sector expansion due to accessing new markets.
Determine Mode of Response
Based on your organization's position in the economic cycle, identify the appropriate response mode:
Reactive
Identify quick-to-execute measures with few dependencies and concrete impact in response to business urgency and/or executive directive.
Proactive
Enable the organization to respond to different types and magnitudes of business change in a more planned and controlled manner.
Strategic
Establish an efficient, agile, sustainable, and strategically aligned cost-optimization practice across all stages of the business cycle, regardless of business conditions.
Establish IT Cost Optimization Objectives
Identify your organization's IT cost optimization goals. IT's goals will relate directly to several factors such as:
- The organization's position in the economic cycle and IT's corresponding response mode
- Position in the current budget cycle and other constraints
- The organization's strategy
- Role of IT in the organization: supporter, enabler, or partner
Economic Cycle and Corresponding Response Mode
IT Cost Optimization Services & Resources
Determine initiatives based on mode of response.
You have been informed of a 10% budget cut and must make an effective IT spending decision:
- Reduce headcount
- Optimize applications
- Scale back on vendor engagements
- Reduce project overhead by cutting projects
A slowdown has reduced revenues and you need to reduce proposed budget by 15%.
You have time to plan how to reduce your budget for next year:
- Identify skills and knowledge gaps that contribute to higher operating costs and plan to rectify through cross-training exercises
- Identify redundant assets based on usage reports; plan for reduction in assets
- Identify vendor contracts that can be renegotiated or are coming up for renewal and plan for cost-cutting negotiations with those vendors
- Identify the highest priority projects and target those that can be delayed or postponed without impacting the business
The business has identified cost optimization as a major strategic initiative for IT service delivery.
- Establish project portfolio management capabilities that ensure only high-value projects are approved and delivered
- Develop a sourcing strategy that encompasses shadow IT to optimize assets as well as optimize vendor management opportunities
- Establish an AI strategy to leverage RPA capabilities, enabling either headcount reduction or redeployment of human assets to more value-added workloads
Focus Area Activities
Work with our analyst team to optimize your organization's IT costs while preserving core capabilities and strategic priorities.
| Workforce Optimization |
Asset Optimization |
Vendor Management |
Project Prioritization |
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| Reactive |
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TOOLS AND RESOURCES |
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| Cost-Cutting Planning Tool | ||||
| Proactive |
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TOOLS AND RESOURCES |
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| Strategic |
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TOOLS AND RESOURCES |
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| Asset Optimization |
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| Reactive |
TOOLS AND RESOURCES |
| Proactive |
TOOLS AND RESOURCES |
| Strategic |
TOOLS AND RESOURCES |
| Vendor Management |
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| Reactive |
TOOLS AND RESOURCES |
| Proactive |
TOOLS AND RESOURCES
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| Strategic |
TOOLS AND RESOURCES |
| Project Prioritization |
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| Reactive |
TOOLS AND RESOURCES |
| Proactive |
TOOLS AND RESOURCES |
| Strategic |
TOOLS AND RESOURCES |
Boardroom-Ready Communication Tools & Templates
Prioritize the initiatives
Align the activities in step 2 to the cost-optimization goals determined in step 1. Prioritize the initiatives based on this alignment.
Develop an action plan
Leverage Info-Tech templates and tools to create a highly visual cost-optimization roadmap that lays out your proposed cost-optimization goals.
Build a communication plan
Create a communication plan and executive presentation to inform approvers and key stakeholders about your cost-optimization plan, gain their support, and report on execution progress.
Communication should include:
- An answer to the question “what's in it for me” for all impacted stakeholders
- Key dates, deliverables, impacts, and descriptions of specific changes being made
- Clear statement of roles and responsibilities throughout the initiative-execution lifecycle