A new Forrester Research report, From Black Box to Glass Box: Case Studies in IT  Financial Transparency, urges CIOs and IT shops to shift from being technology asset managers to  internal service providers—who can demonstrate that value.

Non-tech people typically still have little insight in the value and activities of IT. IT is  being correlated to as “stuff”, facility management… IT spending is based on % of the revenue and IT costing is based on the investments in assets instead of services. That makes it a black box and the comparison with competitors impossible; the competitive disabler.

But we are heading for change. IT changes from asset management to being an internal service provider knowing and showing true value.

You will be asked to:

1. Translate assets into insight in meaningful services (don’t pick-up your ITIL book from behind your desk but study your organization – http://westbury-it.com/blog/how-to-improve-your-itil-processes/);
2. Expose and communicate those services (service catalog and start measuring the quality of the service and compare it with the service conditions);
3. Deliver a bill and/or report to your customer;
4. Start controlling services instead of assets.

In general you should be prepared for change in the way you are discussing IT processes and assets from a customer centric approach.

Your IT manager and CIO will have the following problems or disadvantages if they can’t deliver:

• As long as IT costs are not related to the organization services and products it will lead to false assumptions. Such as having too much overhead leading into a new round of cost savings (perhaps at your department?). In the end it might direct you to a competitive disadvantage no one knows of.
• It could cause managers to make wrong decisions in allocating more investments in certain fields believing it is more profitable.

To start IT cost-transparency, the following is learned from real live experiences:

1. Start by making IT more credible;
2. Don’t underestimate the magnitude of the effort;
3. An organization change with new roles, skills and based on customer focus.

Are you ready? Why wait? It could start with you!

We are and know the field experts.

Just drop us a line:

http://westbury-it.com/about-us/office-locations

Others:

http://www.cio.com/article/608063/Why_IT_Costs_Must_Come_Out_of_the_Black_Box_Now

http://westbury-it.com/blog/report-openness-our-window-dressing/

Martijn