How to Make IT More Cost Effective

Many employees don't understand all the business events that drive internal IT consumption and determine the cost of providing technology. But if you don't know what moves the needle on IT, you can't make defensible decisions about how to improve those numbers.

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"Part of our survival as IT professionals is to really understand what we do efficiently. The stuff we don't-let it go to outsourcers or the cloud or wherever else that makes good sense," says Jeff Shipley, director of IT infrastructure and operations at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas City.

Some drivers are obvious. Retailers, for example see the seasonality of holiday shopping produce spikes in IT usage in their stores and data centers.
In health care operations like Shipley's, membership renewal rates and customer satisfaction are the challenges all year long, he says.

That's in good times. Now with the chaotic economy throwing people out of work and off medical benefits, plus the dramatic changes expected in the healthcare industry under the Obama administration, those concerns are bearing down on IT, Shipley says. "If you don't bring some visibility to where those dollars are going, you're going to have some real issues."

To get a handle on what IT truly costs at Blue Cross Blue Shield, Shipley is applying both software and people power. Last year, the healthcare provider hired a financial analyst dedicated to IT and started using software and services from Apptio in Bellevue, Wash., to help determine costs.

In a software-as-a-service agreement, Blue Cross sends Apptio IT spend information-hardware, software licenses and overhead charges, as well as labor charges. Apptio runs the information through its analysis tools to produce charts showing estimated IT costs by application and over time.  

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