US IT Spending Benchmarks For 2007

Every year, CIOs and their finance people get prepared for this question from their CEOs: "How does our IT spending compare with our competitors?" To help them respond, Forrester annually provides IT spending benchmarks, including our recommended IT spending benchmark: spending to maintain and operate the IT organization, systems, and equipment (MOOSE) as a percentage of revenues. Our 2007 estimates for this benchmark metric by industry and size of company are included in this report, along with the source data by industry from Forrester's Business Data Services, InformationWeek 500 (IW 500), and other benchmarks. Once a CIO has compared his or her company's IT MOOSE metric with our benchmark data, the real fun begins — understanding and explaining the differences. Whether a company's IT MOOSE is higher or lower than our benchmark, a CIO should take advantage of our guidance and tools to determine the cause of the discrepancy and whether being high (or low) is good or bad.