Salire has been talking to businesses for 10 years about raising the capabilities of employees to better justify and communicate the value of business investments.  We know that communicating how innovation and higher productivity affects business will continue to become more important in today’s (and tomorrow’s) business environment.

Today’s post will focus on how to prepare for a budget request project.  With these preparatory steps you will increase the odds of your proposal making sense and getting the attention it deserves.

Key Decisions

In the beginning of an effort like this it is important to make some key decisions (or determinations) like; Does this project require deep financial analysis for approval?  What type of financial analysis is required (detailed ROI/TCO or higher level business impact analysis)?  Does this request require a detailed written business plan or would a summarized PowerPoint presentation be more appropriate?

Build Your Support Network

Before you start the detailed work, socialize your proposal with key people in the company to gain a network of support.  This process will give you more information to build your case, help you gain perspective (which is always important) and keep anyone from being surprised.

It is also important to make sure there are no hidden surprises that could affect your proposal.

Validate Your Work

As you are working through your plan there will be opportunities to go back to your support network and ask follow-up questions and refine the plan.  Once you are done then spend time reviewing your plan (analysis and/or business case) with your support team.  They will help you with the final refinements and positioning.

If you follow this process the final plan will be clearer, have broad support and should resonate well with your management.

When you calculate your current costs, you obviously have to use what you purchase to meet your peak needs rather than just your average needs over time. This means you need to account for all of the idle processing power that you are required to maintain in order to meet your peak demand. 

When you calculate your projected Cloud costs, you will need to understand your provider’s cost structures for provisioning, using and de-provisioning resources on a temporary basis to meet these peak period demands. Your TCO model will have to be able to reflect dynamic changes in usage so you can capture the true cost of the Cloud solution.

 Idle resources are a costly element of any infrastructure. Since Cloud computing has the promise of eliminating those costs, it is definitely worth including this metric in your TCO studies.

This week I wanted to take a look at some methods and best practices at optimizing the way I write my jQuery scripts.  I found the following article very helpful jQuery Performance Rules. While not all encompassing and missing some important items like the performance benefits between using $(‘#something’).each(function(i){}); and the faster approach of $(‘#something’).SomeFunction();. It does cover some very good points that will help you write better performing jQuery scripts and faster is always better in my book.

In the early days of IPT adoption when MPLS was a technology with great promise to corporations and cabling infrastructures were in need of upgrades, seldom could any of these projects on their own cost justify themselves, but together they made a dynamic combination. I have seen companies rejecting IPT because the requirement for cabling infrastructure or WAN upgrades killed an otherwise great ROI for IPT.  However, there were other business applications that would also benefit from the WAN and cabling upgrades that were struggling to justify their projects. Because these separate projects were having to justify their expenditures with these upgrades included in their individual ROI studies, none was successful on their own in showing a positive ROI. 

With the growing interest in Virtual Desktop (VDI) technologies, we seem to be back to those days again. In order to provide a viable rich experience to users, video, telephony, security infrastructure, bandwidth optimization and cabling upgrades for Power over Ethernet may need to be addressed depending on the condition of those infrastructures. Widening the net to include multiple technologies for a single ROI study, could allow other common technology upgrades that could positively impact many otherwise separate business needs.

Cooperation and coordination by multiple projects is required to accomplish the larger goal and in the end it is really the most effective way to invest in IT.

Ok, so let’s get back to reality. Rarely do the stars align so perfectly for these type of acquisitions. The rush of the market forces never let you stand still with your technology acquisitions. In fact, often you have to make such acquisitions at a less than optimal time. Sometimes when you think you are saving money by not moving forward, there is an unmeasured cost in standing still.

An ROI study that compares the cost of standing still with your current technology vs. adopting a new technology is a valid approach to financial analysis. However, beware that you don’t focus your attention purely on the capital and operating costs of each scenario. You can be in a situation that you are paying almost nothing for your old technology. In that case there will never be an ROI to invest in new technology. 

Be sure to ask questions similar to the questions noted below before deciding to stand still. If possible, quantify these items and include them in your analysis.

What limitations exist that impact your business units from meeting their business objectives?

What does this limitation cost your company?

Is the equipment failing more?

How long would it take to find parts to repair the equipment?

What is the cost of losing the functionality provided by the technology?

Are you not providing services to your customers that your competitors are because of the technology?

Are you losing market share because of this?

Are you losing an opportunity to take market share from you competitor who is resting on its old technology laurels?

Standing still may be appropriate at times, but the determination to do so must take into account elements that are broader than your typical ROI analysis.