Gartner Research

12 Rules of IT Cost Management

Published: 01 July 2020

Summary

CIOs challenged with better managing IT costs — cost cutting, asset optimization and investing in deliverables that matter most to the businesses’ mission and objectives — should apply these 12 rules to their strategic cost optimization efforts.

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Overview

Key Challenges
  • Many IT organizations lack a formal process and a common language for continuously refining costs, optimizing IT spend or programmatically investing to create business value.

  • Cost cutting is a reactive exercise and fails to consider the real impact to business outcomes, objectives and risk.

  • CIOs do not actively drive their teams to manage IT spend with a clear strategic alignment to business goals and objectives.

Recommendations

CIOs that desire more strategic approaches to IT cost optimization should:

  • Elevate the cultural focus and priority of strategic cost management by implementing a programmatic and proactive cost management approach.

  • Demonstrate IT stewardship of corporate funds by

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