Manage an IT Budget

IT is viewed as a cost center without a clear understanding of the value it provides.
After completing the budget, the CIO is faced with changing expectations, disruptions, new risks, and new threats.
IT departments often lack a reliable budget management process to keep itself on track towards its budget goals.
Over budgeting risks credibility if projects are not all delivered, while under budgeting risks not being able to execute important projects.

Our Advice

Critical Insight

Managing your budget is not just about numbers; it’s also about people and processes. Better relationships and a proper process leads to better management of your budget. Understand how your relationships and current processes might be leveraged to manage your budget.
No one likes to be over budget, but being under budget isn’t necessarily good either. Coming in under budget may mean that you are not accomplishing the initiatives that you promised you would, reflecting poor job performance.

Impact and Result

Implement a formal budget management process that documents your planned budget and actual expenditures, tracks variances, and responds to those variances to stay on track towards budget goals.
Manage the expectations of business stakeholders by communicating the links between IT spend and business value in a way that is easily understood by the business.
Control for under- or overspending by using Info Tech’s budget management tool and tactics.

Manage an IT Budget Research & Tools

Start here – read the Executive Brief

Read our concise Executive Brief to understand the increasing expectations for IT departments to better manage their budgets, review Info-Tech’s methodology, and understand the four ways we can support you in completing this project.

Manage an IT Budget – Executive Brief

1. Document

Create a streamlined documentation process that also considers the elements of people and technology.

2. Track

Track your planned budget against actual expenditures to catch areas of over- and underspending in a timely manner.

3. Control

Leverage control mechanisms to manage variances in your budget.

About Info-Tech

Info-Tech Research Group is the world’s fastest-growing information technology research and advisory company, proudly serving over 30,000 IT professionals.

We produce unbiased and highly relevant research to help CIOs and IT leaders make strategic, timely, and well-informed decisions. We partner closely with IT teams to provide everything they need, from actionable tools to analyst guidance, ensuring they deliver measurable results for their organizations.

What Is a Blueprint?

A blueprint is designed to be a roadmap, containing a methodology and the tools and templates you need to solve your IT problems.

Each blueprint can be accompanied by a Guided Implementation that provides you access to our world-class analysts to help you get through the project.

Table of Contents

Need Extra Help?
Speak With An Analyst

Get the help you need in this 3-phase advisory process. You'll receive 5 touchpoints with our researchers, all included in your membership.

Guided Implementation 1: Document

Call 1: Break up your budget (by month, account, and type).
Call 2: Assess your current documentation process to discover bottlenecks and how to mitigate their effects.