IT Optimization: Budgeting and Planning for IT Cost

IT costs are often a mix of equipment refresh cycles, convoluted software licenses and often confusing IT service provider proposals. Add into the mix, cloud computing and managed service providers and how do you even start to develop an IT budget? This workshop will provide an overview of an Excel-based IT budgeting approach that enables organizations to take a more proactive approach to managing their IT investment. It will also cover some basic IT knowledge that non-technical managers need to know to validate the budgets that their IT managers may be submitting to them. Lastly, the IT budget can also be used to analyze cash flow and other financial impacts of IT initiatives, enabling an organization to better respond to changes in the economic environment and have insight into future years’ spend. See why the IT budget is a valuable management tool and how to have it support management decision-making by attending this presentation. This session will cover:

• How to develop a detailed IT budget based on types, categories and classes of IT spend
• How a detailed IT budget can support better cash flow and financial management
• How to segregate mandatory from discretionary IT spend for organizational agility
• Understand IT hardware life-cycle risk and refresh cycle impacts
• Understand common software licensing models and cost model impacts
• Look at managed service providers and cloud computing and their impact to the budget
• Switching the IT paradigm from cost to investment and tying to organizational strategy