Exception
To the Rule
One Company that is bucking the flat-to- slightly-increased budget trend is the Sedona Group, a workforce management solutions provider in moline, ill. David buzzell, cio at Sedona, expects a budget increase of 10% to 20%
in 2012, which will go toward adding staff, upgrading systems and
launching new projects.
major technology investments at Sedona next year will include
completion of a Windows 7 and office 2010 upgrade, server
upgrades, consolidation of two phone systems, a deeper push
into mobile applications and increased functionality in Sedona’s
business intelligence and reporting systems. the latter reflects
Computerworld’s Forecast survey finding that bi is one of the
top technologies identified as being instrumental to long-term
sustainability. buzzell also agrees with survey respondents about
the competitive importance of Web applications. “We will migrate
most of our offices to a new Web-based application to allow shar-
ing of data and resources between locations,” he says. “this has
reduced the need for internal staff at many of our offices, while
providing better service and functionality.”
When choosing which projects to pursue next year, top priority
will be given to those that deliver direct value and can be imple-
mented quickest, buzzell says. but streamlining operations and
eliminating multiple platforms will also be emphasized, to reduce
costs. “it’s fewer items to support and maintain workflows on,” he
says. “this streamlining of processes has a direct roi.”
— MARY BRANDEL
involve cutting operational costs while shifting spending to new
development, Beniwal says. The goal is to move from the current
70-30 ratio of ongoing maintenance versus new services and capabilities to a 60-40 ratio. Achieving this, he says, will involve taking
real steps toward private and public cloud initiatives to reduce
costs in some areas. It will also require a serious look at eliminating little-used, redundant and costly systems.
double-edged Sword
Across industries, IT groups are facing a similarly double-edged
sword: Despite the uncertain economic recovery, businesses are
cautiously increasing IT investments for next year, and they want
to do more than just keep the lights on — they want to see business
returns, such as revenue growth and competitive differentiation.
“The good news is, they want to spend,” says Alan Guibord,
founder of The Advisory Council, an IT consulting firm in Salem,
N.H. “The bad news is, they’re being very demanding about their
expectations of what will come out of I T for that investment.”
For many IT organizations — which have spent the past couple
of years hacking away at operating costs as a result of the recession — that will mean not only carefully choosing projects that
promise high returns, but also transforming
their operating models and sourcing strategies to further reduce infrastructure costs
and reinvest those savings in new endeavors.
In Computerworld’s 2012 Forecast survey,
for instance, more than one-third of the 353
IT executives polled said I T budgets would
increase next year, just slightly more than
last year (see charts on page 20). But while
budgets are inching upward, IT remains
laser-focused on the bottom line, continuing
to seek out new ways to economize. Indeed,
when respondents were asked to name
the most leading-edge projects they would
undertake next year, the top two responses
were virtualization and the cloud, both of
which promise to radically remove costs from operating models.
And the No. 1 management challenge for 2012, respondents said,
will be budget constraints and economic pressures.
top worrieS
top three management
challenges in the next 12 months:
1 Budget constraints/
economic pressures
2 managing projects
3 managing expectations/
business alignment
Source: COMPUTERWORLD’S
excluSive ForecaSt 2012 Survey,
June 2011. baSe: 353 it executiveS
