There’s no doubt that getting the most out of your IT investment should be one of your top priorities. Many IT vendors have taken notice and are doing their part to ensure you’re working smarter and have access to the accurate data you need, when you need it. However the concept of IT Optimization can be defined in many ways, and we think a recent article on bigfatfinanceblog.com by Alan Radding narrows these down quite well.

1. Mission Optimization: The first step you should take is to determine what exactly you want your IT to do for finance, and your business as a whole. Your IT should be leveraging data, systems, and networks to help the business attract customers and generate more revenue.
2. Platform/Vendor Optimization: The more platforms your company supports the more difficult they are to manage. While a single platform may be unrealistic – you should strive to have as few as possible.
3. Application Optimization: Be sure to run the best mix of applications for your company. Focus on those like business intelligence, analytics, performance management and collaboration.
4. GRC Optimization: Define governance policies in a way that IT systems can be appropriately automated, monitored, and enforced.
5. Security Optimization: This goes hand-in-hand with GRC Optimization to address data protection and privacy. This last step should have a broad scope and should be built into everything IT does from the outset.

If done correctly IT optimization can lower costs and generate revenue. To read the article in its entirety, click here.

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