by Mark P. McDonald | August 22, 2012 | 3 Comments
In the 2012 Gartner Executive Programs CIO survey we asked CIOs several questions about the metrics they use, how effective the metrics were and how effective they were at demonstrating the business value of IT. We shared the data with CIOs over the past year and some interesting insights came up that are the subject [...]
Category: 2013 Amplifying the Enterprise Management Tags: 2013 Planning, Finance, IT management, Metrics
by Mark P. McDonald | July 11, 2012 | Submit a Comment
If John Stuart can take a hiatus, why can’t I. Please enjoy this prior post on the best metric for IT. The issue of demonstrating the business value of IT is at the top of mind for both CIO’s and other executives as they look to allocate cash and other resources across the enterprise. The [...]
Category: budgets IT Governance Leadership Tags: IT organization, IT Value, Metrics, Value of IT
by Mark P. McDonald | December 21, 2011 | 2 Comments
Benchmarking is a hot topic among CIOs and IT leaders as they look to evaluate and justify their operations by answering the question — ‘how do we compare with others?” Increasing change creates demand for increasing benchmarking as companies value peer comparisons over their own experience and history. This bias makes it surprisingly easy for [...]
Category: 2012 CIO Management Tags: 2012 planning, CFO, Metrics, Tools, Value of IT
by Mark P. McDonald | November 30, 2011 | 2 Comments
Precision is the enemy of IT value and a root cause of why it is so hard to measure IT’s. About the only thing that you can prove with precision is that is not wasting money. Precision requires that specific investments that produce pre-defined and specific results. You want to produce more widgets, then you [...]
Category: CFO CIO Management Tags: Finance, IT Value, Metrics, Value of IT
by Mark P. McDonald | August 10, 2010 | 1 Comment
Productivity is measured by the output created for a particular set of inputs. Productivity ahs been a real sticking point for CFO’s related to IT. Most have sought to ‘raise’ IT productivity by reducing IT resources – the denominator at the expense of the numerator – results. Concentrating on managing the denominator tells less than [...]
Category: Technology Uncategorized Tags: Infrastructure, IT management, IT Value, Management, Metrics, Productivity, Value
by Mark P. McDonald | July 28, 2010 | Submit a Comment
Just about everybody can tell you the relationship between the IT budget and company sales. Percentage of sales is a common and quick metric for benchmarking and describing your IT organization, CIOs see it as handy because in most cases the number is rather small. IT spend as less than 1% or even 5% of [...]
Category: CFO Leadership Tags: CFO, IT Value, Metrics, Value of IT
by Mark P. McDonald | June 18, 2010 | 8 Comments
The issue of demonstrating the business value of IT is at the top of mind for both CIO’s and other executives as they look to allocate cash and other resources across the enterprise. The short answer is that right now there is no one metric and the most prevalent one IT budget as a percent [...]
Category: budgets CFO CIO Leadership Tags: 2011 Planning, Business Management, CFO, IT and Business, IT management, IT Value, Metrics
by Mark P. McDonald | July 30, 2009 | Submit a Comment
“The truth, what is the truth?” is the question that Meryl Strep’s character asks at the climax of the Oscar winning movie Sophie’s Choice (1982) Wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophie’s_Choice_(film). In the movie the question of truth shapes the characters, their decisions, their weaknesses and ultimately their fate. Questions regarding the truth have the same effect on [...]
Category: Signs of weak management Tools Tags: Metrics, Operational Leadership, Signs of weak management
by Mark P. McDonald | July 1, 2009 | 3 Comments
Measuring the relationship between IT expenditure and business activity is a challenging subject. While measuring IT as a percent of revenue is a popular comparative benchmark, it is a measure that can provide a misleading indicator, particularly when it is considered in isolation. IT as a percent of revenues is a ratio and therefore subject [...]
Category: 2010 budgets CFO Tags: 2010 planning, IT Finance, IT Leadership, Metrics, stupid management tricks
