This year we've also spent a fair amount of money with 25,000 desktops. We've invested in technology that allows us to put them all on the same operating system, to make sure that they can all be managed from central locations, so you no longer have to dispatch people on the sneaker patrol to go to your desktop to do things. (This includes) everything from virus definitions to patches to monitoring the help on the desktop. It's all done from a central location. That's reduced our cost to maintain these things dramatically.
WS&T: What is your project-prioritization process?
WOODS: From a technology standpoint, the infrastructure is truly centralized. Application development is centralized, but each line of business decides how much they want to spend and how (they want to spend it). We are not making the decisions we shouldn't be making. (Lines of business) are making those decisions.
WS&T: How do the lines of business understand how much to budget for technology?
WOODS: Each one of our major lines of business has a chief information officer that we assign. That individual is the focal point of communication. He sits on the senior-management group of that business. When the project is first discussed, based on a high-level design, we'll give the line of business an estimate. But we can't commit until we do detailed specs and design. The line of business is prepared to make a go/no-go decision once the detail is made.
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