How should you tackle the process of producing an IT budget that delivers value, doesn’t take forever and is actually aligned to the business ?

Summary 

Often, the IT budgeting process is a detailed, line-item-driven exercise that fails to align with enterprise objectives. CIOs and IT leaders can increase the value that IT delivers by integrating the IT budgeting process with the company strategic planning process. 

Overview 

Key Challenges 

• CIOs and IT leaders often prepare the IT budget in isolation, without a clear understanding of company or business strategies and objectives. 
• IT budgets often focus on individual general ledger line items, rather than on ensuring that the right investments are made to support company goals and objectives. The IT budget is often viewed as “fixed” and often lacks flexibility to fund the right things required to enable the success of the company. 
• Investment decisions are too often driven by whether the spend is operating expenditure (opex) or capital expenditure (capex). 

Recommendations 

• View IT budgeting as part of the overall company strategy. Work closely with business unit (BU) leaders to understand how they will deliver on the objectives that come from the company strategy. 
• Make IT budgets flexible and agile. This generally requires shifting fixed costs to variable costs, over time, and focusing on the prioritisation and alignment of key initiatives, not individual line items of spending. 
• Leverage a solid business case process to ensure that all investments across the enterprise are driven by value to the company and not whether a particular spend is opex or capex. 

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