Operational streamlining has three prongs

Johna Till Johnson, president and chief research officer at New York- based Nemertes Research, recently reported for Network World (U.S.) that a majority of companies Nemertes surveyed on Web services indicated that reducing overhead is a critical challenge for them. Strategically deploying technology can help a company achieve this, but it’s not the whole story. Successful operational streamlining also requires effective benchmarking and a supportive culture. She looked at each in turn.

Strategic technology deployment. A significant percentage of companies surveyed report that Web services are an effective way to lower operational costs. By centralizing accounting or customer service via Web services, a company can get away with fewer accountants or customer support personnel. One organization cost-justified a multimillion-dollar rollout of Web services on the grounds that it let them reduce the accounting department by 500 positions. However, there’s a catch: if the cost-savings are outside the IT budget, ensuring that they actually accrue requires effective benchmarking and a company-wide alignment of goals.

Effective benchmarking. Once a potential cost savings has been identified, an organization needs to have the processes in place to measure the savings. This is a lot harder than it sounds because it might be considerably out of the traditional scope of IT departments. If a new technology has been deployed with the goal of reducing headcount in, say, accounting, someone has to validate that the head-count reduction occurred and that it didn’t result in unintended costs. Most organizations don’t perform this kind of benchmarking regularly. Worse, most aren’t even sure who should be doing it.

Goal alignment. Regardless of who performs the benchmarking, there has to be companywide agreement that an initiative is worth the effort. That means ensuring that everyone – lines of business, IT and non-IT centralized services – commit to realizing the promised results. “If the business unit really wants something to be done, they’re going to have to belly up to the bar. If they claim that it’s going to save them a million dollars, the money disappears from their budgets. If they aren’t willing to sign up for it, it doesn’t get done,” said the CIO of one manufacturing company. Most organizations are only about 33 percent of the way there. They’ve mastered the art of deploying strategic technologies but are wrestling with effective benchmarking and goal alignment.

Would you recommend this article?

Share

Thanks for taking the time to let us know what you think of this article!
We'd love to hear your opinion about this or any other story you read in our publication.


Jim Love, Chief Content Officer, IT World Canada

Featured Download

Featured Articles

Cybersecurity in 2024: Priorities and challenges for Canadian organizations 

By Derek Manky As predictions for 2024 point to the continued expansion...

Survey shows generative AI is a top priority for Canadian corporate leaders.

Leaders are devoting significant budget to generative AI for 2024 Canadian corporate...

Related Tech News

Tech Jobs

Our experienced team of journalists and bloggers bring you engaging in-depth interviews, videos and content targeted to IT professionals and line-of-business executives.

Tech Companies Hiring Right Now