IT Operations Financial Management Helps The Business Control Its Service Consumption

A new and urgent imperative is emerging in IT operations. As business users' expectations of IT continue to rise, many IT operations groups lack the business maturity to effectively demonstrate the business value of IT investments. Business users are demanding greater IT cost transparency and financial analysis in order to understand the true cost of service operations. They believe this transparency and analysis is critical in enabling them to intelligently manage demand for IT services and participate in cost management decisions. IT cost transparency and financial analysis is a natural next step in parallel with BSM projects. Forrester examined one organization that is already addressing these challenges to find out how to organize for IT operations financial management and what process, analysis, and report automation is required. The project at Nationwide Mutual Insurance demonstrates that good transparency and analysis of IT operating costs, if presented in an intuitive way to business units, helps drive better business decisions for IT cost optimization — and that the business and IT can jointly make these decisions.