The Isosceles Conundrum: Find the missing link
Monday, 01 June 2009 11:03.
We are finding in todays tough business climate some organisations are hitting a stalemate position as they wrestle with the 'Isosceles Conundrum' of reconciling their business position and bottom-line financials, given the following opposing drivers:
- Finance and Corp Policy are dictating cost reduction, prudent spend and tighter fiscal and budget approval controls.
- In the face of fierce competition and declining margins, Business units are demanding new competitive product and higher performant, innovative ICT services.
- The ICT groups are facing demands for efficiency improvements and new service capabilities against slashed budgets and ever challenging operational environments.
Hence when we discuss ICT Optimisation solutions with clients we invariably move around the triangle looking to understand their critical drivers, pinch points and constraints, to breakout of the cycle and find a way forward for eventual decision making.
ROI is always on the discussion agenda, although sometimes difficult to calculate given the clients often poor understanding of their internal source data such as the financial impact of a service outage, how many outages, overall resource costs, SLA penalty avoidance estimates etc.
We find the missing link is the ability to demonstrate to the client not only the ROI business case, but also to verify the current ICT asset is being fully utilised and that business-critical applications are being optimised for peak performance, or would be further improved from the new ICT investment. An APM audit would help verify the latter 2 elements for example.
So in the current business climate, we believe you will need a compelling proposition case for final decision making and that an ROI calculation may not be enough to support the concept of 'spend a little more to save a lot more'.
Is your company just riding the storm navigating the Isosceles triangle with hatches battened down and hoping for the best, or actively planning how it can best position itself to ride the up-turn wave in the future?
Subscribe to this comment's feed
