WiredScribe: The Business of IT

The credit crunch and recession have put value-for-money at the top of the business agenda.  IT budgets, and more specifically data centre operations, have been among the first to bear the brunt of the cost-cutting axe.  Operational expenditure on top of high initial capital investment means CIOs must now cut cost and increase return on investments. However, reducing investment can damage an organization’s smooth functioning so how do you find initiatives that are cost-effective with a relatively quick payback period but not at the expense of disrupting the business? Know your Cost-Cutting Sweet Spots:   Maintenance and support accounts for more than 50 percent of an organisations IT budget.  In the initial phase, an audit team should identify all DCO assets deployed.  This will enable analysis of annual spending on servers and storage devices, network components, software licenses, applications, databases, and operating systems.  Overspend...

The economic turmoil we witnessed over the past two years has left no industry untouched. Nevertheless, the global insurance industry has continued to post growth, thanks partly to newly emerging markets like China and India among others in the Asian subcontinent. The first quarter of 2009 witnessed a drop of 3.8% in net written premiums. The momentum accelerated in the second quarter of 2009 during which the net written premiums declined by 4.8%, the biggest drop in decline ever since ISO began recording quarterly changes in premium. The economic turmoil we witnessed over the past two years has left no industry untouched. Nevertheless, the global insurance industry has continued to post growth, thanks partly to newly emerging markets like China and India among others in the Asian subcontinent. The first quarter of 2009 witnessed a drop of 3.8% in net written premiums. The momentum accelerated in the second quarter of 2009 during which the net written premiums declined by 4.8%, the ...

Increased productivity and effectiveness, reduced time-to-market, enhanced product quality, lower spending on testing, and faster test cycles are some among the many allurements offered to entice organizations to invest in test automation tools. Test automation, if executed judiciously, can streamline the testing process, and deliver high returns on investment (ROI). It can speed up testing to accelerate product releases, improve test coverage and reliability, ensure consistency, and offer significant financial savings. Nevertheless, studies indicate that globally close to 50 percent of all test automation projects fail. The test automation outcomes either fail to deliver on financial expectations or do not satisfy stakeholder expectations. There have been several cases in the past where organizations have abandoned their expensive test automation tools and have resorted to manual testing to get the development project back on track. Reasons for failure are many—lack of a clearl...

Globally, software defects cost the economy hundreds of billions of dollars each year. At a more micro level, it costs organisations anywhere between US$ 5 million to US$ 30 million annually in lost sales and customer goodwill depending on the scale of its operations. Even a single high profile outage could irreparably damage a business. Increasing the overall defect detection efficiency in an application during the software development lifecycle could shrink application maintenance cost considerably and have a direct impact on an organisation's top as well as bottom line. This makes rigorous and comprehensive testing of applications prior to go-live a critical business imperative. While organisations have been conducting in-house testing and even outsourcing certain segments of the testing process to external service providers, market dynamics demand faster test cycles, testing earlier in the life cycle, and improved software quality a...

Examine the balance sheet of any manufacturing firm, and one would notice that inventory accounts for 20 percent to 60 percent of its total assets. True, inventory has a definite financial value; a comprehensive and effective inventory management policy can result in increased revenues and enhanced efficiencies. Nonetheless, is inventory really an asset or could it toll the death knell for an organization? Factors like demand volatility, shorter product lifecycles, rising customer service expectations, increasing global competition, diminishing brand loyalty, shrinking margins, and globally distributed supply networks have made quick response to marketplace changes critical to a company's success. This has led to different echelons within the supply chain network resorting to safety stock accumulation to maintain customer satisfaction levels. While inventory is necessary for the smooth functioning of business, high inventory exposure could mean financial losses due to ...