As IT Finance practitioners and practice leads, we can all agree that cost modeling (aka service costing) is the key to truly evaluating costs and informing decision making within our organizations. It is the catalyst for alignment between IT and the enterprise it service and the key to organizational maturity, e.g. “running IT like a business.” If you’ve recently implemented your cost model or are just beginning your journey, being properly prepared to defend it is your next move. The excitement of data and insights often quickly fades as the model is shared and adopted. The new transparency it provides stakeholders often leads to doubt and “defense mode” for everyone involved. In the long-term, your model will result in trust and better decision-making between IT and the business. But first, you must navigate a sometimes-tenuous “transparency journey” and lead the business to trust your model and the insights it delivers.
This is where everybody starts, the status-quo. Stakeholders know there’s a vast amount of data out there, but nobody knows how to use it. Insights are locked up, and questions go unanswered. There is zero transparency.
When transparency is first introduced, stakeholders are skeptical. All the data is finally on the table, but people are slow to trust it. IT is forced into a defensive position and conflicts arise. This phase can be discouraging, but just remember… the data isn’t flawed. What’s truly flawed is stakeholders’ perception of the data.
You must continually educate to fight doubt. Be prepared to answer questions like:
When transparency becomes standard operating procedure, that’s when the real magic starts to happen. As IT, executives, business partners, and other stakeholders see the data through the same lens, the dialog is elevated from being emotionally-driven to strictly fact-based.
Eventually, stakeholders come to trust IT and its data – letting transparency fully guide decision-making.
Doubt is inevitable as the business evaluates your new model’s outputs, so you must be prepared to field questions and defend your data. Here are three crucial rules for responding to stakeholders and socializing new insights:
Once the organization accepts cost transparency for what it is, you’ll be able to focus on cost optimization. Your cost modeling initiative will allow you to quickly drive down run costs, reveal waste and redirect savings, justify new spend, and so much more.
If your organization is asking “What can we do to spend smarter?”, download our eBook A Practitioner’s Guide to Cost Modeling and contact us to speak with an ITFM expert who can guide you and your team through this journey.