Maximizing IT's Bottom-Line Impact: From Business Strategy to IT Action Podcast

by Robert J. Benson

Successful CIOs and CFOs examine IT spending using business value and bottom-line impact as yardsticks to create IT budgets that are affordable and that support the new and innovative IT activities that the business needs to thrive. They accomplish this under three distinct budgetary pressures: first, the overhang of existing "lights-on" IT activities (legacy systems, infrastructure, personnel, etc.), which usually assumes annual spending increases; second, requests by the business for new IT investments, or projects, which increase spending; and finally, corporate pressure to decrease IT costs.