Bob Benson

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Bob Benson is a Fellow with Cutter Consortium's Business Technology Strategies practice. His consulting features business value, effective IT application development, consulting methodology development, IT infrastructure planning, and facilitated planning. Read more ...

2013: More Turbulence and, Sadly, More “Back to the Future”

Bob Benson | Dec 11, 2012 No Responses

Dec 112012

2013: More Turbulence and, Sadly, More “Back to the Future”

Last year I wrote about the effect of turbulence on us IT folks and, more importantly, to the business/government users of IT. So has “turbulence” and its cousin “uncertainty” been reduced as we peer into 2013? Let’s see: political direction (in the US: more or less taxes; more or less government regulation; health care; less gridlock; sequestration; Europe; regulations’; the imminent beginning of the 2014/2016 campaigns)? Huh. Don’t see anything much resolved here. Let’s see: economy (Europe again; individual European states e.g., France, Greece; impact of US energy independence; consumer spending? taxes again)? Oh, maybe a little more direction can be seen –- but not much. Let’s see: technology (products/services; Cloud, et al; all the …

2012 Turbulence Means “Back to the Future”

Bob Benson | Dec 22, 2011 No Responses

Dec 222011

2012 Turbulence Means “Back to the Future”

That there’s turbulence for 2012 that will affect business and IT isn’t much in question. With great economic uncertainties (recession, Europe, elections) and, at the same time, significant changes in IT such as widespread user devices (tablets) and cloud, a lot is in flux. But what will this mean? From everything we see at clients and in the press, this means a (perhaps uncomfortable) return to basics in IT. That is, we will see great emphasis by CIOs and CTOs on the things that have in the past been very important. This includes, for example: Improving Operational Excellence Understanding IT’s costs and taking action to reduce them Successfully delivering IT value (and projects) Doing effective …

Strategic IT Planning: Get the Business of IT Right

Bob Benson | Oct 4, 2011 3 Responses

Oct 042011

Strategic IT planning is central to establishing the IT vision and, more importantly, the vision of how IT will propel the business (or government agency) forward. It’s one of the seven basic competencies every CIO and IT organization should master to bring value to the business. However, mention “strategic” to IT professionals and the conversation will mostly turn to security, cloud, business intelligence, and various platform and network developments. Sure, IT’s roles in the business underlie the conversation, particularly in issues such as flexibility, enhanced user experience, competitiveness, and the like. The truth, though, is that most of this “strategic” conversation is about issues of IT “supply” — how the IT organization will effectively develop …

A Shift in the Notion of “Portfolio Management” Opens Oppty for IT

Bob Benson | Mar 5, 2010 8 Responses

Mar 052010

For many years,Tom Bugnitz and I have been recommending that IT organizations think of themselves as a service business, with five fundamental service portfolios. The Application Portfolio (e.g., providing the applications and support to business units) The Project Portfolio The Infrastructure Services Portfolio (e.g., e-mail, network attach, remote access) The User Services Portfolio (e.g., help desk, PC repair) The Management Services Portfolio (e.g., providing procurement, planning support to business units) We also recommend that IT organizations do their budgeting in portfolio terms — that they should identify the service provided and the costs associated with them. (Over and over again we’ve written in Cutter Business-IT Strategies E-Mail Advisors, “If you don’t know cost, you don’t …

Is Our IT Superior to the Competition’s? No???

Bob Benson | Jul 23, 2008 3 Responses

Jul 232008

In our just-published Cutter Benchmark Review article (see “Linking IT Budgeting, Governance, and Value,” Vol., 8, No. 7), Tom Bugnitz and I report that only 27% of managers of large companies believe their IT is superior to that of their competition. (By “large,” we mean companies with more than US $50 million annual spend.) For all companies, regardless of size, only 39% of managers believe that their company’s IT is superior. Wow. Forget about the idea that a manager may not actually know what his or her competitor’s IT is and how it compares. Forget about the problem of separating IT from IT-enabled business and management process — for, of course, that’s what really matters. …

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Bob Benson

2013: More Turbulence and, Sadly, More “Back to the Future”

2012 Turbulence Means “Back to the Future”

Strategic IT Planning: Get the Business of IT Right

A Shift in the Notion of “Portfolio Management” Opens Oppty for IT

Is Our IT Superior to the Competition’s? No???

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