Money, money everywhere and no one wants to think

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Your five-step fitness journey to effective IT portfolio management 

Technology is expensive.  But you already know that.  Leading edge and emerging technologies demand premium prices for premium performance but still become obsolete in a matter of months.  As an IT leader you have to ensure you are investing your budgets wisely.  And that doesn’t mean being smarter about deciding which software to buy, which service to add, or how much additional storage capacity to commit to. 

It means making sure that you are making technology investment decisions based on business needs.  That’s a lot harder than it sounds because businesses are going through a period of extreme disruption – not just the current pandemic, but the massive business changes being driven by digital transformation that are likely to rapidly change operating models for years to come. 

In this environment, every dollar of technology spend you commit has to contribute to the success of your business.  Capital investments are the easy ones; this mindset must encompass support, operations and projects – every aspect of the digital portfolio. 

It must include every application and platform, assessing how each contributes to the creation of business value and ruthlessly cutting those that don’t deliver.  Technology spend must become more intelligent. It must be viewed as an investment in business capability where every aspect of the portfolio must generate a sustainable and significant return. 

Your business partners are focusing a lot of energy on delivering enterprise agility – the ability to adapt their priorities and investments quickly and painlessly based on a constantly shifting operating environment.  They can’t do that unless the technology that supports every element of modern business is able to adapt and evolve just as quickly. And that can’t happen unless you fully understand your technology portfolio and how it relates to business strategy and objectives. 

But more than simply supporting the business, the highest performing, best managed digital portfolios go further.  They enable the success of the business, and that’s the value you must deliver – you must become a fully integrated part of how business delivery happens.  That’s a long way from where most IT operations are right now. 

Your IT investment strategy needs to undertake a fitness regime aimed at getting it leaner, meaner and better able to support the needs of your organization’s business strategy – and ServiceNow can help you achieve that.  To learn more download the eBook The IT Fitness Journey: Managing IT Portfolio Costs.