Financial Times Warns Companies Not To Cut IT Spend

An interview with the group vice president of research at Gartner, Mark McDonald, was recently published in the FT. McDonald was asked how CIOs can maintain IT systems in the face of required cost cuts.

McDonald suggests that IT spending should not be considered as an administrative expense as this can cause negative performance across the board. Instead CIOs must use their budget to focus on short projects that drive identifiable results. This will improve business performance. IT has a productivity numerator, and this should be the focus for CIOs looking to justify expenditure.

Gartner believes that CIOs can deduce the value of their IT based on the positive effect it has on overall business performance. If the effect is neutral, or negative, then the ROI isn’t good enough to justify the budget.