Responsible IT Financial Management
Fiscal responsibility is at the top of the list for every business owner and corporate executive today. In times where profit margins are lower, international and virtual competition is exploding, and infrastructure costs are high; its only good business to maintain a vested interest in the financial affairs of your corporation. Overhead expenditures from staffing to infrastructure are being carefully analyzed all across the world as executives struggle to balance the costs of doing business today with the ability to turn a profit.
However, there is one area that escapes the watchful eye of many financial executives and business owners, their IT infrastructure costs. Because IT is a specialized and highly technical field most MBA holding executives and business owners with backgrounds in sales, marketing, and other fields don’t understand IT financial management procedures. As a result many financial executives shy away from breaching the topic of IT financial management with their employees and contractors.
The problem is very real and for many companies very large. A number of IT departments have run away budgets and a lot of businesses look at IT management as a game of blind mans bluff. Even if you’re willing to open the books on your IT department how do you know whether their line item expenses make sense? As a result IT financial management often becomes a very expensive issue of trial and error. The mystery surrounding IT financial management is a situation plaguing many businesses today.
But regulation of IT practices, policies and costs extends beyond the private sector. Governments in other institutions in the public sector face numerous challenges with IT management. The problem has been compounded by agencies previous attempts to control and regulate their IT management policy internally. The results were chaotic as there was literally no regulation over the industry.
In response the British government established the ITIL, or Information Technology Infrastructure Library, a collection of works dedicated to providing a uniform approach to IT service management. The ITIL financial management approach is now the most widely adopted approach to IT management worldwide. The result has been a streamlined and no nonsense best practices approach to delivering the needs of global IT management in both the private and public sectors. Because technology is constantly evolving the standards and practices for ITIL also update regularly. The latest collection of ITIL standards is known as the ITIL v3, or version 3 of the library.
ITIL service management has been adopted by many leading companies throughout the world from Disney to IBM to NASA. But the benefits of adopting ITIL strategy extend beyond mega corporations. Instituting ITIL in your company can extend the following benefits from improved IT services, better third party integration, and a more professional approach to IT service delivery. But perhaps the most important reason for adopting ITIL practices in your business is fiscal responsibility and the peace of mind knowing all aspects of your business are operating at peak performance and value.
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