Create a Transparent and Defensible IT Budget
Build in approvability from the start.
Unlock This BlueprintBlueprint Contents:
1. Create a Transparent and Defensible IT Budget Storyboard – A step-by-step guide to developing a proposed IT budget that’s sensitive to stakeholder perspectives and ready to approve.
This deck applies Info-Tech’s proven ITFM Cost Model to the IT budgeting process and offers five phases that cover the purpose of your IT budget and what it means to your stakeholders, key budgeting resources, forecasting, selecting and fine-tuning your budget message, and delivering your IT budget executive presentation for approval.
-
Create a Transparent and Defensible IT Budget Storyboard
2. IT Cost Forecasting and Budgeting Workbook – A structured Excel tool that allows you to forecast your IT budget for next fiscal year across four key stakeholder views, analyze it in the context of past expenditure, and generate high-impact visualizations.
This Excel workbook offers a step-by-step approach for mapping your historical and forecasted IT expenditure and creating visualizations you can use to populate your IT budget executive presentation.
-
IT Cost Forecasting and Budgeting Workbook
3. Sample: IT Cost Forecasting and Budgeting Workbook – A completed IT Cost Forecasting & Budgeting Workbook to review and use as an example.
This sample workbook offers a completed example of the “IT Cost Forecasting and Budgeting Workbook” that accompanies the Create a Transparent & Defensible IT Budget blueprint.
-
Sample: IT Cost Forecasting and Budgeting Workbook
4. IT Budget Executive Presentation – A PowerPoint template and full example for pulling together your proposed IT budget presentation.
This presentation template offers a recommended structure for presenting your proposed IT budget for next fiscal year to your executive stakeholders for approval.
-
IT Budget Executive Presentation
Your Challenge
- IT struggles to gain budget approval year after year, largely driven by a few key factors:
- For a long time, IT has been viewed as a cost center whose efficiency needs to be increasingly optimized over time. IT’s relationship to strategy is not yet understood or established in many organizations.
- IT is one of the biggest areas of cost for many organizations. Often, executives don’t understand or even believe that all that IT spending is necessary to advance the organization’s objectives, let alone keep it up and running.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
Internal and external obstacles beyond IT’s control make these challenges with gaining IT budget approval even harder to overcome:
- Economic pressures can quickly drive IT’s budgetary focus from strategic back to tactical.
- Corporate-driven categorizations of expenditure, plus disconnected approval mechanisms for capital vs. operational spend, hide key interdependencies and other aspects of IT’s financial reality.
- Connecting the dots between IT activities and business benefits rarely forms a straight line.
Impact and Result
- CIOs need a straightforward way to create and present an approval-ready budget.
- Info-Tech recognizes that connecting the dots to demonstrate value is key to budgetary approval.
- Info-Tech also recognizes that key stakeholders require different perspectives on the IT budget.
- This blueprint provides a framework, method, and templated exemplars for creating and presenting an IT budget to stakeholders that will speed up the approval process and ensure more of it is approved.
Unlock This Blueprint
Member Testimonials
After each Info-Tech experience, we ask our members to quantify the real-time savings, monetary impact, and project improvements our research helped them achieve. See our top member experiences for this blueprint and what our clients have to say.
9.3/10
Overall Impact
$32,630
Average $ Saved
16
Average Days Saved
Client
Experience
Impact
$ Saved
Days Saved
Kansas Public Employees Retirement System
Workshop
10/10
N/A
N/A
Areez helped us hone in on the specifics of the defensible budget, which is huge for us. I like the approach and thoroughness of the workshop.
Canadian Defence Academy
Guided Implementation
7/10
N/A
N/A
This is an excellent, important topic for organizations aspiring to "Create a Transparent and Defensible IT Budget" Eight months into my new rol... Read More
Oregon Public Defense Services Commission
Guided Implementation
10/10
$13,700
20
Not applicable.
The City of Winchester
Guided Implementation
9/10
$2,740
2
speaking with someone that has/had previous experience as a CIO. That's relevant. It allows me to "walk in the shoes" of someone performing the fun... Read More
City of Bloomington, IL
Guided Implementation
9/10
$13,700
10
Jennifer exhibited excellent attentiveness and comprehension of our goals. She was highly responsive to our customization requests for the IT Spend... Read More
Champaign Residential Services Inc
Guided Implementation
10/10
N/A
N/A
Thank you for kicking around a few ideas Jennifer! We may not have any immediate action items but now I'm more aware of what to ask for in the futu... Read More
Experience Grand Rapids
Guided Implementation
9/10
$13,700
5
Jennifer clearly explained how to use the spreadsheet for budgeting and as a tool. Her explanations of each section will prepare me with thought ou... Read More
Pyxus International, Inc.
Guided Implementation
10/10
N/A
N/A
No negative. Just getting started and at this point I am not in a position to measure time or cost savings.
GENESIS CANCER CARE UK LIMITED
Guided Implementation
9/10
N/A
2
Enjoyed the time with Benoit, well structured session and very informative. I didn't feel there was a worst part.
Hogan
Guided Implementation
10/10
$137K
120
Monica was great to work with. She took the time to understand where I was at in my budget journey and helped me through the entire process from cr... Read More
Job and Family Services
Guided Implementation
8/10
N/A
N/A
Benoit was very knowledgeable and understood the factors we are dealing with. He helped us come to the conclusion that we did not need assistance c... Read More
Champaign Residential Services Inc
Guided Implementation
10/10
N/A
N/A
I can't say that this saved any time or money, but it made me think about my budget in a different way. Now I'll be prepared with better data if I'... Read More
Tomago Aluminium Company
Guided Implementation
10/10
N/A
2
Nu Skin International
Guided Implementation
7/10
$12,999
5
The best was going through the financial review process and the results of the various views. The hard part is that Nu Skin doesn't fit nicely with... Read More
MicroPort Orthopedics Inc.
Guided Implementation
9/10
N/A
10
Monica delivered a summary of the IT Spend Study on our recent IT Steering Committee meeting. Her findings and assessment were thorough, direct, an... Read More
Soaring Eagle Casino & Resort
Guided Implementation
10/10
$32,499
5
Providence Care
Guided Implementation
9/10
N/A
2
Great to benchmark where we sit against peers to validate where we have made investments and where we need to continue to make investments. No cos... Read More
University of Kansas Hospital Authority
Guided Implementation
10/10
$32,499
5
the worse part was gathering the data, but the team as patient. The best part was getting the results and all the hard work paying off with excell... Read More
Renown Health
Guided Implementation
9/10
N/A
2
We are excited to see the final outcome of the study and how Renown compares to others in our industry. Monica and Kennedy were great to work with,... Read More
Chief Industries, Inc.
Guided Implementation
10/10
N/A
N/A
CGIAR
Guided Implementation
9/10
N/A
20
Precise information and no waste of time.
City of Bloomington, IL
Guided Implementation
10/10
$32,499
10
Brother International Corporation
Guided Implementation
9/10
$2,599
2
Best - Being able to collaborate with resources outside of Brother to review our IT budget distribution and trends. The opportunity to get another... Read More
Omaha Public Power District
Guided Implementation
10/10
$64,999
50
Kennedy and Dave were great to work with - knowledgeable, responsive. We anticipate utilizing results of the study for multiple efforts, including ... Read More