Charge Back To Move Forward
With budgets tightening, IT managers need to identify how different departments use IT resources and how they can be charged accordingly, says Andy Hardy
Business-critical data continues to grow unabated, but for many UK companies their IT spending is still being tightly controlled. This means that, for the budget-challenged IT director, the need to do more with less has become a harsh reality.
We are all used to juggling IT resources across departments, but a way to cut out this headache is to identify how different departments use available IT resources and then look at how they can be charged accordingly.
Chargebacks
An IT chargeback system is a method of automatically accounting for technology-related expenses. It applies the costs of services, applications and equipment to the business unit that uses them. This system contrasts with traditional IT accounting models in which a centralised department bears all of the IT costs in an organisation, and where those costs are treated simply as corporate overhead.
If business-unit decision-makers perceive IT to be “free,” they will be unable to account for the true cost of business investments and activities. Furthermore, there will be a lack of incentive to make the most efficient use of IT resources. It is easy to see why IT managers, who face potentially unlimited demands for IT resources, often become the champions of chargeback strategies.
Within data storage, where organisations worldwide are facing unprecedented growth, these strategies present a particular relevance. IT departments can rely on automated usage reports to accurately chargeback costs to individual business units. Storage-based chargeback, for example, associates actual storage usage with individual business departments to enable storage cost recovery for enterprises of all sizes.
Using tools that automate reporting for actual energy cost and carbon emission savings, companies also gain access to precise data that supports green IT initiatives. This allows for increased data centre efficiency and greatly minimised data centre power consumption. Embracing these strategies, therefore, could be a major step for your organisation towards greater efficiency, and therefore profitability.
Andy Hardy is MD of International Sales at Compellent
