|
 If you
want to reduce costs and increase ROI, you need to know the
answers to these critical business questions: What assets do you
own? Where are they located? How much are they really costing you?
Request your FREE Best Practices in Asset Management CD at www.peregrine.com
and learn how the operational and financial benefits of Asset
Management will allow you to make better business decisions.
Creating
a Unified Planning and Performance Management
Process
More and
more, companies must concern themselves with how to create a
process that allows every manager to identify personalized targets
that meet corporate objectives. Join OutlookSoft CFO, Henry
Schaffer, for a Webcast on April 24th at 12 noon EDT as he
discusses why companies must have a centrally managed, integrated
business solution that includes planning, consolidation, reporting
and analysis to address this concern. You'll also hear how
OutlookSoft's customers are streamlining these business management
processes using familiar components such as Excel and a standard
web browser to more effectively report and distribute results.
Beware
of Perma-Contractors
Almost
all application development (AD) functions within IT departments
rely on contract employees, notes Compass
Senior Consultant Frank Mazzucco, who has conducted research on
contractor ratios. Ideally, he says, contractors make up roughly
10 percent of total AD staff and address specific needs that range
from working with Java on new Web initiatives to using COBOL to
maintain MVS legacy systems. But Mazucco believes most
organizations have too many contract employees assigned to work
that could be more efficiently done by full-time staff. "When
there's a downturn, businesses typically implement a hiring
freeze," he notes. "But there's still work that needs to be done,
and even if you can't hire, it's relatively easy to get a $30,000
purchase order to hire a contractor. When times improve and hiring
resumes, organizations often fail to go back and look at the
contractor situation. Those $30,000 purchase orders keep renewing
and before you know it that 'temporary' contractor is ingrained in
the organization." Therefore, track contractor rations during the
downturn. If, a year from now, the economy is in the midst of a
strong rebound, Mazzucco says many organizations will find their
contractor ratio is as high as 30 percent. He recommends reviewing
the status of long-term contractors: Contractors who have been de
facto employees for a year or so should be offered full-time
positions. Many will not accept the offer because they earn more
as contractors. If they cannot be replaced by a full-time hire,
hold on to them; otherwise, Mazzucco adds, "You say, 'So long.'"
But he also notes that contractors can serve as a buffer when
companies find themselves over-staffed, because they are much
easier to lay off than full-time employees.
Is
Insecure Software a Crime?
The
National Academy of Sciences (NAS) wants Congress to make it
easier to punish companies that produce insecure software that
puts businesses and consumers at risk, according to an article
from The Register's Ann Harrison. Many computer-security
specialists have recommended such measures for years, Harrison
notes. "But the fact that they are being uttered by members of an
NAS panel," she concludes, "suggests the once-fringe ideas are
more mainstream, and may gain urgency as decision-makers ponder,
for example, what might have happened had terrorists launched an
effective cyber attack simultaneously with the hijackings of Sept.
11.
Comprehensive
TCO
Quick
question: What were the deployment and maintenance costs on your
company's most recent IT systems implementation, upgrade or
product introduction? Sun Serverworld writer Joe Zwers makes a
very good point when he notes that many finance/IT managers have
an incomplete grasp of total cost of ownership (TCO). In his
article, Zwers cites deployment and ongoing maintenance costs as
the most commonly neglected components of TCO calculations. "Even
with small-ticket items, the ongoing costs typically far exceed
the initial outlay," Zwers notes. "A Palm PDA, for example,
appears to be easily affordable at less than $300 per unit. But,
look at the added costs: a contract for unlimited wireless access
is $44.99 per month ($539.88/year). Add in a couple of hundred
dollars for the software, the time the user spends learning and
synchronizing the device plus IT support costs and a PDA suddenly
blossoms into a several-thousand-dollar toy." Read
the article...
Automatic
ROI for the People
An
article posted on PMBoulevard.com provides a useful introduction
to ROI calculation software. The article, which originally ran in
Internet Week, notes that there are two types of software:
solutions that target corporate users and solutions that target
resellers, consultants and IT vendors. The piece concludes that
overall, the benefits of most ROI calculation software outweigh
the pitfalls. The main win, on the corporate side, is that these
applications enable a consistent ROI methodology to be applied to
various projects throughout the lifespan of each of those
projects.
Enron,
Documents and You
One of
the problems facing many corporations today is that paper comes
from disparate sources in large volumes and in different formats,
notes Karl Buttner, president and CEO of 170
Systems. "This leads to IT and other administrative personnel
who don't know where the information is, how to categorize what
they have, or who has the authority to access it," he says, noting
that the problem extends beyond document management to
availability, access and control. "Availability means getting 100
percent of data online from any source -- fax, e-mail, XML, etc.
Access means integrating this data with applications across the
enterprise. And control defines who gets to see it, what
capabilities they have and what rules they follow." Buttner says
the recent troubles at the Immigration & Naturalization
Service (INS) and Enron are "classic examples of organizations who
need a better mix of technology and policy regarding availability,
access and control."
There
is Plenty of IT in Litigation
Seventy-eight
percent of IT organizations have been involved in a dispute that
has ended in litigation, according to a survey by Cutter
Consortium. Of those organizations that report having entered
into litigation, a staggering 67 percent involved a situation
where the functionality and/or performance of a delivered product
simply failed to meet the claims of its maker. In 45 percent of
those situations, Cutter reports, the defects were so severe that
they rendered the product unusable. "The nature of the complaints
speak to a greater need for explicit warranty clauses in the
contract -- with clear statements of what the software can do,
agreed-upon standards of performance, and metrics for judging
whether those standards have been met," notes William Zucker, a
senior consultant with Cutter Consortium and a litigation attorney
who analyzed this survey for Cutter's Business Technology Trends
and Impacts Advisory Service. The survey confirms that most
contracts do not consider or incorporate relationship management
nor build collaboration. In fact, data shows that only 7 percent
of responding organizations have built in monthly review meetings
to their contracts:
How often are IT contracts reviewed?
Every month 7%
Every three months 15%
Every six months
17%
Once a year 34%
Less than once a year 20%
Never
7%
Leveraging
SOP 98-1 to Improve IT Management
For
finance/IT managers who still wrestle with reporting costs
associated with in-house software development, the headline above
may be more of a head-scratcher. Yet, savvy managers are doing
more than simply gathering and reporting data as required by SOP
98-1, according to PlanView Inc. The project management software
and services company offers a white
paper on its site that clearly lays out how companies can
strengthen their SOP 98-1 activities from compliance to proactive
management to mastery. For each of those steps (or levels of
sophistication), the white paper identifies tactics finance/IT
managers should employ. It also shows how some companies use the
processes they put in place to capture SOP 98-1-related data to
develop more accurate IT budgets, improve forecasting of
IT-related projects and strengthen the relationship between IT and
business units. |
Access the complete BusinessITLink archives online.
Creating a
Unified Planning and Performance Management Process
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