Create a Transparent and Defensible IT Budget
Build in approvability from the start.
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Taking a traditional approach to developing an IT budget could result in:
- The need to continually defend core IT expenditures, particularly OpEx.
- The absorption of technology costs via sacrifice of existing budget items due to unknown and unplanned business initiatives.
- Numerous, time-consuming redrafts of the proposed IT budget to get to final approval.
- Significant cuts to the spending required for IT to meet core business needs, resulting in IT underperformance.
Developing a transparent and defensible IT budget will allow you to:
- Better educate the business about IT, how it works, and the value it delivers.
- Engage stakeholders in meaningful dialogue about IT investment decisions.
- Eliminate nasty financial surprises for both IT and the business.
- Create a living budgetary tool that will improve IT financial governance overall.
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Onsite Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn’t enough, we offer low-cost onsite delivery of our Project Workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a road map in place to complete your project successfully.
Book NowModule 1: Get into budget-starting position
The Purpose
Understand your IT budget in the context of your organization and key stakeholders, as well as gather your budgeting data and review previous years’ financial performance.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Understand your organization’s budget process and culture.
- Understand your stakeholders’ priorities and perspectives regarding your IT budget.
- Gain insight into your historical IT expenditure.
- Set next fiscal year’s IT budget targets.
| Activities: | Outputs: | |
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| 1.1 | Review budget purpose. |
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| 1.2 | Understand stakeholders and approvers. |
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| 1.3 | Gather your data. |
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| 1.4 | Map and review historical financial performance. |
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| 1.5 | Rationalize last year’s variances and set next year's budget targets. |
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Module 2: Forecast project CapEx
The Purpose
Develop a forecast of next fiscal year’s proposed capital IT expenditure driven by your organization’s strategic projects.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Develop project CapEx forecast according to the four different stakeholder views of Info-Tech’s ITFM Cost Model.
- Ensure that no business projects that have IT implications (and their true costs) are missed.
| Activities: | Outputs: | |
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| 2.1 | Review the ITFM cost model |
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| 2.2 | List projects. |
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| 2.3 | Review project proposals and costs. |
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| 2.4 | Map and tally total project CapEx. |
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| 2.5 | Develop and/or confirm project-business alignment, ROI, and cost-benefit statements. |
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Module 3: Forecast non-project CapEx and OpEx
The Purpose
Develop a forecast of next fiscal year’s proposed “business as usual” non-project capital and operating IT expenditure.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Develop non-project CapEx and non-project OpEx forecasts according to the four different stakeholder views of Info-Tech’s ITFM Cost Model.
- Make “business as usual” costs fully transparent and rationalized.
| Activities: | Outputs: | |
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| 3.1 | Review non-project capital and costs. |
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| 3.2 | Review non-project operations and costs. |
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| 3.3 | Map and tally total non-project CapEx and OpEx. |
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| 3.4 | Develop and/or confirm proposed expenditure rationales. |
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Module 4: Finalize budget and develop presentation
The Purpose
Aggregate and sanity-check your forecasts, harden your rationales, and plan/develop the content for your IT budget executive presentation.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Create a finalized proposed IT budget for next fiscal year that offers different views on your budget for different stakeholders.
- Select content for your IT budget executive presentation that will resonate with your stakeholders and streamline approval.
| Activities: | Outputs: | |
|---|---|---|
| 4.1 | Aggregate forecast totals and sanity check. |
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| 4.2 | Generate graphical outputs and select content to include in presentation. |
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| 4.3 | Fine-tune rationales. |
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| 4.4 | Develop presentation and write commentary. |
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Module 5: Next steps and wrap-up (offsite)
The Purpose
Finalize and polish the IT budget executive presentation.
Key Benefits Achieved
An approval-ready presentation that showcases your business-aligned proposed IT budget backed up with rigorous rationales.
| Activities: | Outputs: | |
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| 5.1 | Complete in-progress deliverables from previous four days. |
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| 5.2 | Set up review time for workshop deliverables and to discuss next steps. |
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