IT Management: reducing costs and improving users satisfaction
Enterprises and administrative bodies of all sizes have been literally inundated by distributed IT. The expected benefits have, for the most part, been achieved, including increased productivity, broader access to information, and improved service quality for customers.
Information technology has now entered an operational phase. It needs to be managed. Many people are realizing the extent to which distributed IT, due to its very nature, creates major management complexity. In this respect, the Y2K issue revealed to companies all over the world the serious shortcomings that may exist in their information system management. Other deadlines are on the horizon, in relation to IAS/IFRS requirements and the Sarbannes-Oxley Act. These new accounting and legal standards are increasing requirements in the field of asset management and consequently in terms of IT assets.
IT management involves a range of aspects: a dynamic inventory of IT assets and how they are used, life cycle management (input, output, changes), financial management, technical support management, handling requests, relations with users, costs monitoring, etc.
If you do not have good management, it is impossible to ascertain, master or reduce IT costs in line with general management requirements. It is also difficult to simultaneously improve the quality of the service that users are provided with and thereby improve the productivity of the information system and the organization as a whole. The impact of non-management also has a knock-on effect on the capacity to prepare for and support the ongoing changes the information system undergoes. Lastly, without management you have neither security nor effective steering of any outsourcing.
Enterprises and administrative bodies of all sizes are confronted with this challenge. The issue is even more pressing for outsourcing providers entrusted with their customers’ IT management.
So those are the stakes. The solutions are known. IT management is of course a matter of having the right tools, as well as the right methods, procedures and organization, while some people even say it requires discipline too.
This is why, working with IDC, we wanted to understand how enterprises perceived their level of management of their IT resources and what the real state of affairs was, measured using precise criteria.
Download Staff&Line / IDC White Paper - "IT Management, perception and reality"
