How have you structured your tech purchasing process to make sure TCO calculations are accurate?


1.8k views1 Upvote11 Comments

Senior Director of Engineering in Software, 501 - 1,000 employees
We have a centralized tech purchasing team.
All licenses, servers, etc have its costs distributed by team (or system) and by FTE.
We have a "rather be roughly right than precisely wrong" approach.
VP of IT in Real Estate, 5,001 - 10,000 employees
All purchased assets, licenses, etc are properly tracked and which its cost are measured throughout its lifecycle. 
Each procurement would consider its incremental cost and to properly track its lifetime cost of ownership
Solutions Architect in Software, 51 - 200 employees
All hardware and software costs are dealt with through a central point-but are allocated per business unit. In this way there is one point of control in terms of acquisition, and spend can accurately be allocated across business units. 
CIO in Finance (non-banking), 1,001 - 5,000 employees
We have a dedicated system to track all IT expenses and map each contract to its related asset or application/system.
We can easily get a 5Y TCO of each asset that can be later allocated by line of business.
Director of IT in Software, 51 - 200 employees
Yes, we do. We have a separate procurement department, where they have a process to follow. So every purchase will happen through a rigidly defined process where it evaluates all TCO calculations too. If needed we would signup for trials/demo accounts to verify the intended usage and use cases.
VP IT in Energy and Utilities, 1,001 - 5,000 employees
We centralized tracking of purchases but now allocate distributed costs to each department. We can then tie the usage to product or customer related needs and understand how it drives our external business versus our internal business but while having visibility into TCO. 
1
CIO in Education, 201 - 500 employees
We have not structured it in such a way to make sure those calculations are accurate. We do our best to interpret the data that we have on these purchases, but I'm not confident that they are always accurate.
IT Director in Education, 51 - 200 employees
I worked at a  K-12 private school that places a great deal of importance to the use of technology in learning and teaching.
We have what we call an IT Replacement Cycle, where based on  the lifespan of  equipment, we plan the replacement and plan to set aside the funds accordingly. Most of our devices fall in the 4 or 5 year replacement cycle, but others need to be replaced sooner and a few last more than 5 years, so our planning cannot be the same for  each year, however, knowing in advance what we need to replace and what investment is needed, helps us have devices that meet our standards at all times.
Director of IT in Manufacturing, 51 - 200 employees
We have very careful planning processes for tech purchases and consider very carefully the anticipated TCO. We also keep some wiggle room, such as redundancy and fail -over plans  in the process to prevent surprises. So far our TCO calculations have been spot on. Measure twice - cut once.
Director - IT Infrastructure - Databases and eBusiness Specializing in Information Technology in Retail, 1,001 - 5,000 employees
Yes to greater extent 

Content you might like

Senior Director, Technology Solutions and Analytics in Telecommunication, 51 - 200 employees
Palantir Foundry
3
Read More Comments
6.3k views15 Upvotes48 Comments

Yes35%

Yes, but not enough, we want/need to ramp up39%

No19%

No, but I expect this will change soon6%


661 PARTICIPANTS

1.8k views1 Upvote1 Comment

Definitely, significant cost savings26%

Somewhat, limited cost savings70%

Not really 4%


23 PARTICIPANTS

312 views

Chief Technology Officer in Media, 2 - 10 employees
I implemented InTune for our organization, streamlining device management and enhancing security. It greatly improved our end user computing experience.
Read More Comments
1.7k views2 Comments