10 ITNOW September 2015

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IT DEPARTMENTCOMMERCIALISING

Does your IT team need to change to fulfi l the requirements of your business? IT costs are increasing as a percentage of revenue and operation expenses and, at a time when many organisations see themselves as technology companies, IT costs are set to further increase. Louise McCarthy, IT Commercial Services and Performance Management Director at Specsavers, looks at the benefi ts of commercialising the IT department.Many IT professionals are not as commercially savvy as they could be - we don’t treat IT spend as though it were our own, there is a lack of governance, transparency, commercial challenge, focus is on new and not re-use, and decommissioning rarely happens so new applications are added into the funnel but very little is removed.

CEOs are looking to CIOs to help with cost reduction to support the current pressures of falling revenues and increasing costs, so the CIO needs IT professionals who are commercially savvy. Organisations need people who ask, ‘do you really need to consume that?’, ‘do we already have one to re-use?’, ‘can we deal with lower level service, reduced volumes or just take the risk?’ ‘is the supplier o� ering value for money?’.

CEO’s are quick to bring together a short term transformation function if revenues are falling, given many organisations IT costs are the largest spend, by creating a team to perform a short sharp controls process change to lower costs. But sustainability comes from the creation of an IT commercial/performance management function.

Once the culture has improved to become more cost conscious the delegation of powers move back to cost centre owners/consumers. Then this needs to be sustainable at an IT leadership level - all senior IT professionals need to think in both dimensions: keeping service for customers whilst delivering value for money.

Cost optimisationTech-only senior resources lack commercial skills and this causes confl ict

at a leadership level. There is a balance between getting the job done and getting it done in a value for money way. CIOs are often reactive about cost optimisation, waiting for cost reduction targets to be handed down before organising cost optimisation activities.

IT leaders typically fail to maximise the benefi t of their cost optimisation activities by not managing these e� orts collectively as an ongoing program and can be too focused on the next ‘quick win’ rather than what will enable them to reduce costs e� ectively.

‘Good’ is often the enemy of ‘best’. IT cost optimisation often stops when an organisation hits its targets, rather than creating a culture of continuous improvement - this needs to be an ongoing discipline, embedded in the IT organisation’s DNA.

An IT commercial directorStrong commercially savvy CIO’s will appoint someone in the IT organisation responsible for IT commercial and performance management. This is often someone from the IT leadership ranks who can lead a cross-functional team to drive accountability for commercialisation of IT costs. This IT commercial director will set targets and choose initiatives for cost optimisation activities using frameworks, such as Gartner’s ‘Four Levels of Cost Optimisation and Decision Framework for Prioritising Cost Optimisation Initiatives.’

This needs to involve operational leaders and key sta� to look at IT costs in the context of end-to-end business processes. Also the business must be involved, as e� ective IT commercialisation requires

making value-based trade-o� s about which projects, services and service levels the enterprise can a� ord.

The IT commercial/performance management director will be responsible for the following tools to drive value and reduce costs for the CIO/CEO:

1. Treat the IT commercial challenge as an ongoing disciplineThe ‘reactive’ IT commercial model fails to maximise commercial challenge activities and leaves money on the table. It lacks the involvement of other key IT sta� and the business. However, the expectation of CIOs and IT leaders is to continue to reduce costs while providing additional innovative business solutions.

Having a commercial savvy IT organisation will free funds to enable the business to have innovation to support business growth while IT costs either remain constant or reduce.

These increased demands require a renewed focus on how to manage IT commercials. A proactive approach is centrally planned and managed at the CIO level. Embedding commercial challenge within the IT organisation’s DNA requires leadership and planning by CIOs and IT leaders.

Whilst IT cost management should never be a number one priority - delivering and maintaining IT solutions that add business value should be - e� ective cost management often needs to have a higher priority in most IT organisations. This requires increased focus, visibility and — most importantly — accountability.

The IT organisations we have seen optimise costs most successfully did not discover new ideas before their peers

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September 2015 ITNOW 11

IS THE IT DEPARTMENT DEAD?

COMMERCIALISING

Common practices in teams that focus on the IT commercial challenge:

• Making the CIO the champion of the initiative• Continuous commercial awareness training and education • Continuous reviews of suppliers contracts • Challenging suppliers to provide innovation and cost reduction• Empowering every IT resource to challenge each other and suppliers via a governance framework and performance management• Creating a IT commercial and performance function overseeing the activities, driving ideas, and measuring success and driving innovation strategies• Leveraging key IT sta� in (not only IT leaders), linking to personal performance management framework• Motivating IT leaders and sta� to e� ectively manage costs• Setting targets and cost-saving initiatives with defi ned end and start dates• Engaging with the business leaders to identify ways of using IT to reduce costs in the business• Providing e� ective IT cost transparency, including detailed costs by resource, asset, contract, vendors and so on, to enable the creation of initial baseline costs and the tracking of actual savings• Benchmarking IT spending against peers in order to identify areas to further optimise, and continuously scanning the marketplace to stay abreast of what other organisations are achieving• Holding sta� accountable for delivering against the targets• Including cost optimisation targets in the objectives of each IT sta� member• Measuring the savings identifi ed, meeting regularly to review and track successes and failures• Celebrating success and encouraging continued participation• Challenging suppliers for free investments• Putting an e� ective progress report in place to measure progress and regularly reviewing and refi ning it at monthly meetings and as part of the planning cycle

did. They chose to organise their cost optimisation activities centrally, focusing on identifying the best ideas, making their objectives clear throughout the organisation and then holding people accountable for proper execution.

In order to have everyone in IT thinking about cost optimisation and innovation, idea generation should involve all IT sta� via crowdsourcing online tools and should employ a measurement system to evaluate and prioritise all ideas.

A key element of success will be to incorporate the commercial challenge practices into a larger IT strategy. The success of the strategy will partly depend on the success of the commercial initiatives. These initiatives should ideally be managed as part of a program of work. Via a performance management framework you can report progress against key milestones and targets needed to achieve the desired results, report on any risks/opportunities against delivery of the initiatives, and schedule monthly meetings to discuss performance. All

these elements further instil the discipline needed to continuously manage cost optimisation at all levels within the IT community and assists with cultural change to a cost conscious environment.

2. Commercial challenge and supplier managementSupplier contracts, if not managed well, can very quickly become out of date. Contracts needs to have su� cient fl exibility built in when fi rst let to enable business change. For example, fi xed price contracts are not good in a declining business, whereas capped time and material contracts are good when the business are not specifi c on their requirements because this puts the onus on the supplier to take some risk.

Certain clauses need to be mandated in contracts, such as termination for convenience, continuous improvement cost and performance, benchmarking and so on. Measureable outcomes need to be agreed and measured against during the life of contracts.

All IT techies who are responsible for working with the supplier need to be fully conversant with the contract, performance measures and commercials. This should include the business analyst level, as they will be responsible for the day to day management of the supplier against the contract.

Addition supplier management governance is key, monthly operational and quarter senior strategic reviews, utilising actual factual data and KPI measures.

Suppliers should also be asked to invest in your company for strategic reasons, to share innovation specifi cally for your company to show that they are real value add partners to your organisation.

All contracts should be reviewed regularly and via the IT commercial function challenged with the supplier when they are not fi t for purpose or no longer add value to your organisation.

Your techies should be empowered to challenge suppliers. All too often IT techies feel uncomfortable with this, but working with and watching the IT commercial function undertake this can build confi dence over time and it becomes a way of working.

3. IT budgeting — managing multiple viewsAn inability to manage the traditional asset or general-ledger-based view of IT spend will mire the CIO in continuous dialogue with the CFO and undermine IT’s credibility, thereby impeding the ability to demonstrate value, so successful CIOs and IT commercial directors typically manage multiple views of IT spend. Sometimes this is driven by the complexity of the enterprise requiring views by business unit, region, product, and so on. More often, the need for multiple views is driven by the complexity of IT itself. The fact that IT delivers projects and services often requires views of both.

The project or portfolio view is needed to enable organisations to prioritise investments, understand associated cost (typically capital-intensive) and communicate how IT enables change. The services view should be focused on presenting the operating expense (opex) budget by IT services. The value of ongoing costs of IT services is typically demonstrated through price/performance - this gives fi nancial transparency in a language the business understands.

12 ITNOW September 2015

The ability to slice and dice the IT budget into di� erent views aids in demonstrating the business value of IT. This additional transparency can begin to answer the question, ‘Why is IT so expensive?’ along with communicating the IT budget in business terms.

4. Cost transparency and chargeback/show backDoes the organisation know every penny it spends in a price (P) x quantity (Q) model, price (P) being the service provider’s responsibility to reduce and benchmark for continuous improvement and quantity or demand (Q) being the consumer’s responsibility to reduce consumption? Having su� cient transparency enables the business and service provider to identify savings.

Benefi ts of cost transparency:There is an ongoing debate about the value of chargebacks/show backs. More than one-third of organisations see limited value and choose not to charge back or even show the client what it costs to deliver IT services (show backs). Others simply allocate costs based on high-level metrics (such as the percentage of revenue or the percentage of employees). However, IT leaders who understand that e� ective chargeback/show back practices have many benefi ts invest in the necessary resources to implement full cost transparency and the right chargeback process for their organisation.

While there are multiple approaches to allocating and charging IT costs I have seen a shift in recent years to IT service-based pricing. This approach goes beyond traditional IT cost pools based on technical domains (such as mainframe, server, storage and network) to the creation of IT

Benefi ts of e� ective chargeback• Better aligns IT with the business• Improves demand management• Helps answer the question, ‘Why does IT cost so much?’• Enhances cost optimisation activities• Increases IT fi nancial transparency

transparency, it can also be used as a mechanism to identify areas of opportunity. This should be incorporated into your continuous improvement supplier contract review process and clauses should be inserted in to every supplier contract that can be enforced to benefi t from benchmarking costs.

7. Continuous IT cost optimisationCIOs and IT leaders have always attempted to optimise IT costs. But too often cost optimisation activities happen organically in di� erent areas of the IT organisation with an IT leadership team scrambling to put together ideas in fl ight to meet the cost reduction target. Once the cost reduction target has been met and the ‘fi re drill’ is over, IT leaders typically return to ‘business as usual’.

Due to increased demands for IT projects and services, some IT organisations have begun to employ a proactive approach that is centrally planned and managed at the CIO level. The primary focus of cost optimisation has often been the IT operational budget. More recently however, the focus is on where IT gets the business involved, thus requiring organisations to make di� cult choices about what projects, services and service levels the enterprise can a� ord.

Governance processes ensure that we focus on the right things with our scarce IT funds and challenge alternatives. Implementation of governance processes to commercially challenge often initially causes confl ict at an IT leadership level. This could be perceived as lack of trust, and taking away autonomy. However, when benefi ts are delivered it is a main driver of behaviour change - IT professionals begin to challenge each other. This, coupled with cost transparency and performance management, drives the cultural change to becoming a cost conscious organisation within IT.

8. Performance managementMany IT leaders avoid the opportunity to communicate IT performance and business value. For some, performance metrics focus on the ‘fi ve nines’ of system availability (99.999 per cent) and operational metrics. But these types of metrics often lack anything that can be considered truly strategic once the original problems are solved.

The key is to create a set of performance

services in business terms, i.e. business process costing.

5. Investment planning — e� ective project fi nancial managementMore than 30 per cent of IT spend is typically invested in new initiatives or projects. In addition, the enterprise often sees the ‘project portfolio’ as the primary value IT delivers. E� ectively managing the project portfolio requires an end-to-end view of an investment, prioritisation against business objectives and key metrics such as payback, ROI, then starting with an approved business case that outlines expected benefi ts as well as total costs.

IT needs to communicate the lifecycle cost of a project at the time of project approval so that more than just implementation costs are funded and tracked. These new operational expenses are also required as part of the fi nancial section of a business case to calculate fi nancial metrics such as ROI, net present value (NPV) and payback period.

IT often is involved in the process of creating the assumptions that drive the benefi ts required to complete a business case and receive funding approval. Accountability for ensuring that business benefi ts are actually delivered is often missing in many enterprises, driving some IT organisations to lead the benefi ts realisation e� ort in order to demonstrate the value of IT. Decommissioning opportunities are considered within the business case and benefi ts are realised.

Once a project is approved, IT needs to track both the actual and forecast project cost through to completion. This is the most common form of project fi nancial management, and is required to ensure that the individual project is delivered in a cost-e� ective manner, and to e� ectively manage the capital expenditure and opex associated with the project portfolio.

6. Benchmarking IT costsBenchmarking IT costs is one of the most overlooked of the commercial tools. It is an e� ective way to track your own performance over time while comparing it to your peers and also allows you to challenge suppliers’ spend on run and change costs, to form the basis for commercial negotiations.

Incorporating e� ective benchmarking into the annual planning process will not only provide additional fi nancial

BCS asked...

How do you view your IT team? (anonymously!)

‘Monolithic killjoys, the modern equivalent of

the chief clerk in sti� wing collar.’

September 2015 ITNOW 13

IS THE IT DEPARTMENT DEAD?

organisations are realising that agility and innovation are crucial to challenging and beating competitive threats.

Whilst most organisations will never need to be as innovative as the high tech giants, the ability to quickly introduce new processes, practices and technologies that have a measurable improvement on business performance, is increasingly being seen as normal.

Good innovation companies structure their approach and focus on:

• establishing a culture where innovation is seen as important;

• analysing and planning innovation;• having a well-established

innovation process; • allocating dedicated resources.

All of these are critical components in capitalising on innovative ideas and turning great ideas into real results - nurturing a culture that allows for innovation is the key. The right planning, processes and structures then provide the mechanics required to deliver real results. Some ideas for innovation generation:

• Portfolio planning exercises;• Supplier strategic innovation

events;• Sta� and partner surveys – crowd

sourcing;• Hackathons etc.

The value of the IT commercial and performance function I have been lucky enough to have been able to build this function in four successive organisations all with the same results: immediate sustainable cost reductions of circa 25 per cent and more recently share price increases as a result.

This has worked for many sectors: IT, government, fi nancial services, and transport. By using common tools the success has been mirrored in all sections we have worked in. The value of an IT commercial and performance management function is that it sits across all IT functions and pulls together costs, performance and commercials into a central view to provide valuable directional data to aid his decision making.

This function won’t work with commercial tools alone; it will need to be suitably senior IT professionals within an organisation to have teeth, i.e. in a shared service function a direct report to the CIO. It will need top down support. It won’t be the

most liked part of the organisation - cost centre owners will see their challenge as a criticism, procurement will see them treading on their toes, fi nance will like end results but never manage to achieve this themselves. But the CEO and shareholders will love them!

This function can benefi t from all IT professionals becoming commercially savvy to enable greater synergies driving value across the business. IT techies who are commercially savvy will drive value to the CIO. CIOs should be looking to recruit techies who are not one dimensional in order to deliver value to the organisation to enable free cash for business growth, company survival, and innovation into new technologies.

CIOs and their teams are continuously on the lookout for ways to better control IT costs and get the most from every IT investment. In addition to looking for funding from individual business unit initiatives, reducing the ongoing IT costs associated with running the business is one of the best ways to free up funding for new, value-added IT initiatives. This is of particular importance to enterprises making the transformation into digital businesses, with IT-driven innovation becoming a necessity.

Summary Organisations mature enough to have IT commercial/performance management functions don’t build up ine� ciencies that are carried for years, until another transformation happens. It uses the tools and processes to prevent it getting that far. This, coupled with transferring the skills to all IT techies, will ensure that the CIO has a totally commercially savvy organisation all driving in the same direction with measureable outcomes and free cash for innovation and growth.

All IT professionals need to process commercial challenge skills. All CIOs need to invest in the commercialisation of techies.

metrics that will communicate multiple activities (such as the delivery of projects and services, fi nancial performance, operational performance, supplier performance and innovation). Often, we see IT organisations separating their IT performance scorecards into two parts — the supply-side scorecard and the demand-side scorecard. The audience for the supply-side scorecard is IT, and the metrics measure IT processes. The audience for the demand-side scorecard is the rest of the business, and the metrics measure IT business service delivery, including IT-enabled business initiatives.

The demand-side scorecard can be used to illustrate the value IT is delivering to the enterprise by increasing the maturity level of IT performance management, scorecards and dashboards.

A performance framework ensures that what we work on is aligned to the organisation’s strategic objectives; we are focused and accountable and can measure success. We would monitor delivery through performance management via a performance hub process. This starts with a business strategy that aligns project delivery to strategy, deliverables against projects and KPI (key performance indicators) against this strategy. This process is rolled out in the organisation, enabling the business to see its performance in a number of ways, for example through the customer’s eye, the employees’ eyes, our fi nances, our projects, our suppliers, and our operations.

A performance hub is a dedicated space where people can gather to view and discuss performance data. By displaying this data and related information in a highly visual way, the hub makes it possible to discuss performance issues openly and interactively, helping senior leaders to run their business more e� ectively by enabling them to take prompt, properly informed strategic decisions.

9. InnovationThe IT commercial functions should addi-tionally be responsible for driving innova-tion into the business from internal and external sources. This innovation will be cost reduction, but also drive business growth and value. In today’s increasingly competitive and disruptive environment,

BCS asked...How do you view your IT team? (anonymously!)

‘Is part of the problem that as more people

become technically aware they assume that what

can be done with domestic ICT can translate easily

to enterprise ICT without a true understanding of

the risks and complications involved?’