Want to Save IT Money? Try Standardizing.

It never ceases to amaze me how many enterprises simply have no structured standards in place for key business technology issues. Are you at ALL concerned about shrinking technology budgets, a decline in valid technology ROI, a technology-inspired erasure of competitive edge, or a complete absence of derived business value from your enterprise technology assets?

You have several choices in terms of dissipating your dissatisfaction. You can:

• Completely ignore the lack of genuine business value coming out of IT,
• Of course, since you have so much money to burn, this isn't a problem for you...
• Browbeat your technology personnel to start delivering value, or else,
• News Flash: Their job isn't to deliver value. It's to get systems operational and keep them that way.
• Invest heavily in a globally recognized silver bullet standard best practice cover the world process methodology to cookie cutter your way to perfection.
  
• Of course, this one matches up nicely with the first option in terms of money to burn.
  
• Start to change business processes to ensure a higher level of business management and control over the IT portfolio,
• Personally, I like this idea. It costs next to nothing; requires nothing more than a few select employees using their brains; and gets you rolling VERY quickly.

The big secret?

Simplify standardization.

I am well aware of the collective gasp of dismay that accompanies this statement every time I bring up the subject of plain old common sense management of the technology portfolio of goods and services. Business technology consumers accuse me of delivering an infomercial. Suppliers whine and wring their hands because (to a certain extent) their costly proprietary partial-solution just got dumped on the