Decisions on IT budget allocations depend not only on process improvements provided by the department, but also how cost-effective and valued these services are to the organisation, according to analyst firm Ovum.
Enterprises also wish to understand how their peers are spending in similar areas, and so comparative metrics are being increasingly used by IT leaders as a tool to persuade C-level executives on IT budgeting decisions.
In a bid to provide a holistic picture of estimated ICT expenditure and staffing levels of organisations across the globe, Ovum has released the Enterprise ICT Spend and Staffing Metrics tool.
The interactive tool enables users to benchmark IT spending in 60 geographies across 19 broad industry verticals and eight employee bands. It provides benchmarks for external and internal spend by an enterprise, as well as staffing benchmarks, across the areas of Infrastructure, Applications, Communications and IT management.
Vinay Gupta, Ovum senior analyst and author of the tool, said while using comparative IT metrics provides a way of communicating the value of internal IT to business, it is important to select relevant metrics.
“Benchmarks are not just numbers, rather these are perceptions and must map to enterprises’ business strategy or goals,” Gupta said.
The tool uses a statistical model that processes data from Ovum’s ICT Enterprise Insights programs, which is a global survey of 6500 enterprise ICT decision-makers.
