Spare IT and Save the Business

It’s occurred to me lately that many businesses are treating IT as a burden. "All those systems! All those strange, pale people manning all those fancy machines! Just think of the cost of the pizza and coffee for that department alone! It’s time to slash funding before all the money we put into IT drags the whole business down."

When it comes to IT, I often want to shake business leaders and say, “It’s your competitive advantage, don’t you see?!” Instead of treating IT as a money pit, companies should consider the fact that a fast, efficient IT organization is the foundation of an agile business. Cutting spending across the board for IT is like shooting yourself in the foot. Current economic conditions demand intelligent investments in systems capable of supporting a changing business.

In this market, new ideas cannot get bogged down in IT. The technology and reaction-time of a company have to keep up with the decisions being issued at the top and the technical problems that result from them. Change Management has to be swift. Incident Management has to resolve events before business impact. Service Management can’t get overwhelmed.

Investing wisely in IT – making it cheaper and more efficient without making it less functional – is how businesses can differentiate themselves from their competitors. It’s how you can be faster than everyone else. And that, surely, is worth the cost of pizza and coffee.

To learn more about how an AlarmPoint’s Alert Management platform supports the business, take a look at my article in BMC’s latest thought leadership book: Viewpoint, Focus on: Business Service Management (BSM).