Lessons From the Field: Beyond ROI: Page 9 of 16

This need for standardization is part of what's pushing Hudson United's desktop upgrades in the next 12 months. As vendors supply fixes and updates, "more and more of the departmental applications aren't supported on Windows 95, like our AP and loan-approval applications," he says. "We're forced to move to Windows 98 at the very least for that department. Little by little we end up with a hodgepodge of different areas with different platforms."

In a case like this, an IT manager faces with a difficult decision: Hire more staff to deal with the increased complexity of support workload, which is an ongoing expense, or make the case for standardization. From the perspective of a very small staff supporting a large network, Trent thinks they've made the correct decision. Some managers try to compare the variable and ongoing costs of hiring more staff to the fixed cost of the upgrades, but be careful: When you compare costs, you assume that you have the choice of hiring more staff. Obviously, that's not always true, and if you make that assumption, you may get snickered at (or worse). In this case, it might be better to simply focus on quality of service.

Death by Committee

If you do not manage your IT dollars well, expect them to be managed for you; that's the dysfunctional management trend that's been surfacing at some large companies. By way of warning, we relate what an insider at one large New York-based investment bank tells us about a new process where IT requests must make their way through two virtual "gates," or committees.

The committees make decisions about whether the request is "strategic" and gets funded or "non-strategic" and doesn't get funded.