As inflation continues to rise, CIOs are being asked to do more with less but there are ways to strike a balance between implementing cost savings and digital innovation. A 2022 Conference Board survey into CIO priorities found that the impact of disruption following the COVID pandemic and rising inflation were the topics dominating their thoughts. While this won’t come as a surprise, the rate at which costs are rising, as companies continue to adjust to new ways of working, is a shock to the system.
With 55% of CEOs surveyed expecting inflation to remain with us until 2023 or beyond, it’s clear many will be looking for cost savings down the line. The pandemic caused companies to accelerate digital transformation and it’s likely that more pressure is going to be placed on CIOs to implement new technology to increase agility. The challenge now is how to innovate for growth while budgets are being squeezed and costs rise.
Keep a tighter rein on your assets
Tightening IT’s grip on asset management to reduce costs should be a priority at any time. But if assets aren’t tracked accurately then costs could soon get out of control. For example, you may be spending money unnecessarily to purchase additional laptops when you already have ones that aren’t being used elsewhere in the company. Another option may be to extend lease cycles for current equipment rather than implementing a wholesale asset refresh program. You could save money on software licenses by right-sizing them against usage or by investing in group licenses vs individual, but you need a clear view of usage at all times.
Having tighter control over your assets could also serve to reduce the issues created by the current disruption being seen in supply chains. If you can’t access the equipment you need when you need it, productivity will be impacted. Lead times continue to grow, but by aligning future asset demand with your current inventory – you can do this by surveying department leads to understand future hire plans and timelines - and factoring in delays, teams will be able to budget and plan better.
Tracking assets throughout their lifecycle feeds into ESG reporting – showing how sustainable you are in the use of physical assets, and how you are tracking usage from a governance perspective. One global financial services company also leveraged enhanced asset management to propagate company innovation.
Controlling cloud spend
The move to the cloud promised cost savings, but as you migrate workloads and support a more disparate workforce, like many other companies you’re probably finding costs are rising. Gartner expects worldwide public cloud end-user spend to increase by 20.4% during 2022 to reach almost $500 billion. As digital transformation programs evolve, you’re going to be more reliant on cloud resources, so how can you keep these costs down?
Most companies have adopted a multi-cloud strategy for cost savings but if teams aren’t able to assess how usage has changed or if you’re managing cloud resources in the same way as you managed on-prem capabilities then you could be wasting money. Much has happened over the last few years. As teams scrambled to support a fully remote workforce, should they now be looking at adjusting resources again to meet the needs of hybrid workers? Are you supporting the same applications that you were a few years ago? Are they still being used? And if so, how? Is it possible to limit resource access (and in turn costs) at some times of the day?
Gaining a real time understanding of cloud usage will allow you to see if you are optimizing spend intelligently with a clear picture of where to place future workloads.
Removing the barriers to cost saving and innovation
One of the biggest barriers to enhanced asset management is lack of visibility across the IT estate. With resources in multiple clouds and on-prem, teams will interact with many management tools consolidating information manually to understand usage. Manual processes take up time and resources, and with rising labor costs and skill shortages to cope with, it’s unlikely you’ll want to tie up team members’ time on these activities. And let’s face it, at the pace of change, you’ll never gain a real-time view managing all this information with a mountain of spreadsheets.
There is a way to do this without tying up your teams and that’s by implementing a digital platform conductor (DPC). A DPC connects to all your databases, tools and repositories and applies intelligence to aggregate and analyze information to give you a real-time view of your IT estate and all dependencies. It also leverages intelligent automation to orchestrate disparate management tools and automate tasks for enhanced asset management. Tasks include communications with end users, getting them to confirm application usage via a self-service portal, aggregating responses, and automating workflows to address those responses.
Using a DPC you’ll have a holistic view of your IT estate, ensuring that you have all the information you need to continue the pace of innovation while optimizing costs.
Book a demo to find out how you can help your business walk the fine line between cost savings and innovation.
