Solution Set

Info-Tech has identified five trends that promise to transform IT departments within the next two years. Changes in mobility, cloud, big data, social media, and security will alter the way IT functions within the business.

Case Study

New technologies mean that IT needs new skills. When the new skills aren't available in-house, it's time to start looking outside.

Organizations that assign significant ongoing IT responsibilities to external suppliers for long periods must perfect their vendor management processes and expertise to ensure continued delivery quality.

Tool

After moving a significant number of apps to the cloud, the organization needs to assess its current organizational performance on cloud adoption. Use this tool to determine where changes and focus are needed across six categories by answering a...

Tool

The IT Leadership Time Benchmarking Tool allows IT leaders to compare their time allocation to that of the most effective IT leaders and suggests changes to make them more effective.

Note

IT leaders must focus on strategy and leadership activities, and avoid spending time on most vendor management activities, managing projects, and work their employees could be doing.

Solution Set

IT leaders have been told by the media, vendors, and analyst community that their role is changing from technology leader to technology strategist, from producer to enabler.

Video

IT leaders feel the pressure to spend more time leading and less time on the details. However, with limited budgets, obsolete technologies, a looming shortage of skills, and a rapidly growing backlog of unmet business requirements, it's easy to...

Note

Organizations are increasingly dependent on external vendors and suppliers to enable the effective delivery of IT services. Manage the vendor portfolio to improve the relationship between your organization and its IT vendors, maximize their...

Video

Improve IT excellence by improving the performance of your vendors.

Tool

Once you decide on vendor performance metrics, you will need a tool to track ongoing vendor performance. Info-Tech's dashboard tool tracks metrics for up to 20 vendors for small and mid-sized organizations. It presents results both at a...

Tool

IT must collect and act on vendor feedback to manage and ensure high vendor performance. Conduct regular vendor satisfaction surveys to measure the IT department's management performance and to address areas where improvement is needed.

Tool

To ensure high vendor performance, IT departments must practice vendor management by recording and acting on vendor issues. Track issues to resolution and understand where improvement is needed.

Solution Set

Organizations are dependent on vendors yet spend little effort managing their performance, resulting in less than optimal results.

Job Description

The role of the Purchasing/Procurement Manager is to plan, execute, and finalize purchasing and procurement strategies for technology spend across the organization.

Job Description

The role of the Contract Manager is to support, manage, and administer contracts for technology spending on services and products across the organization.

Knowledge is power. Go into your vendor negotiations with these tips and tools in your back pocket.

Any enterprise can be adversely impacted by poor vendor performance - especially when it is a key vendor. These vendor problems can be especially traumatic for small enterprises with little or no recourse. As a result, IT managers should make it...

Most enterprises develop the basic skills necessary to complete contract negotiations. However, many overlook the final, and perhaps most important step. Conduct a pre-contract signing meeting with those individuals responsible for negotiating,...

Underutilized software is not as expensive as software that sits on a shelf. Organizations need to know if they are deriving value from an application or simply storing shelfware. Learn to identify and prevent shelfware before it inflicts budget...

Tool

Organizations need to know if they are deriving value from an application or simply storing shelfware. Learn to identify and prevent shelfware before it inflicts budget pain. Use this tool to compare up to 10 applications and help determine...

Video

IT depends heavily on external vendors to deliver key services that depend primarily on people. These include consulting, custom development and help desk services. The quality of people services can be uncertain, and active vendor management is...

Video

IT depends heavily on external vendors to deliver key services such as telecommunications, software maintenance and hardware delivery. To ensure that vendors understand the customer's expectations and deliver to them, organizations should follow...

Enterprises are becoming increasingly focused on pricing when selecting a vendor or negotiating an agreement. In many cases, however, giving prime attention to pricing can be counter-productive. Understand the factors, other than price, that...

Effective Project Portfolio Management (PPM) is fundamental to the success of any enterprise. Market leading software solutions offer structured project and portfolio management functionality, robust reporting, full-bodied resource management,...

IT vendors and service providers continue to deal with the effects of a recession-based economy. Accordingly, enterprises should scrutinize key vendors and suppliers to verify if they can still provide the necessary services and support. Vendor...

Note

The current business outlook is unlikely to show major improvement anytime soon and IT budgets will remain under stress to extract maximum value from every available dollar. Network managers must anticipate how business unit response to these...

Note

The server room is the data and information nerve center of any small enterprise. Use this fully editable policy template to establish appropriate standards, procedures, and restrictions for access to the enterprise's server room.

Note

The data center is the information and data nerve center of any enterprise. Use this fully editable policy template to establish appropriate standards, procedures, and restrictions for accessing the enterprise's data center.

All organizations buy products and services from a variety of vendors. Unfortunately, by failing to consolidate purchases, many are overpaying the vendors and overspending on vendor management. In addition, they may be receiving a lower quality...