This one's about two things: the arcane topic of how IT budgets are set AND how this might affect virtual teams, collaboration, and such not.
The email from a colleague at a large technology company prompted a bit of conversation late last week here on ye olde blogge: In its efforts to cut costs, this company may be rounding up all its telecommuters and insisting that they work only from the office - even though 2/3 of them work with people in remote locations (like Asia, for example, while these folks are in, say, Kentucky or Massachusetts).
In possibly an unrelated connection, It turns out that this company sets its IT budget as a percentage of revenue. When revenue falls, IT budget shrinks. It would appear that someone thinks this will cost less.
Is this good business? I've been asking what others think, especially since this is the time of year when organizations start planning their IT budgets, which typically are set by Fall (for organizations operating on a calendar year, that is).
I just got off the phone with Bob Perrin, who heads Magellan Associates, a global management consulting firm. "This has nothing to do with telecommuting and costs will only increase by bringing people back in-house. Lights, electricity, and office space versus hoteling?" No contest, says Bob. A former CIO himself, Bob says that setting IT budgets as a percentage of revenue "is not a very popular approach." Many organizations instead choose a zero-cost increase regardless of revenue then add budget based on what needs to be done.
So for those of you reading who don't run organizations or worry about things like this, this kind of stuff is very important. It means that you either receive a laptop or wait months - as has happened with one of our clients. There, existing employees have had to wait out a budget freeze. Meanwhile new employees automatically receive laptops. Which doesn't sound all that important unless you've got people on teams that need to have conference calls at 5 AM because that's the only time their colleagues halfway around the world are at work. You need a laptop for this. Just one small example (but not small to the laptop-hungry employees).
Organizations: regard IT as strategic not perfunctory. Who does your CIO or CTO report to? Another topic but the answer to that question speaks to the same concerns about the role IT plays in making work easier and more productive.
