WATCH · Tech Leadership & Boards_
Why Technology Is the Only Budget Line Nobody Can Defend
Saleem Beg · Founder, Teque
● 1:50 · Posted 3 months ago
KEY TAKEAWAYS_
- The accountability gap exists because financial and technical fluency rarely sit in the same person
- IT providers have no incentive to tell you an investment wasn't worth making
- Pick one investment, ask three questions: total cost, what it was supposed to change, what actually changed
TRANSCRIPT_
You know what your people cost and what they produce. You know what your rent costs and what it gets you. Ask the same question about your technology spend and see what happens to the room. Now, every line item in a business has accountability attached to it except one and it's the one that's been growing the fastest for the last 5 years. We can interrogate headcount, marketing, office
costs, travel, but the technology line, it just grows and the answer to what's improved gets progressively vagger. So why does this happen? Well, because financial accountability requires someone who can speak both languages, business outcomes and technical reality.
Your finance director can read the P&L but can't evaluate whether your software investment is delivering. Your IT provider can tell you what was built but has no incentive to tell you it wasn't worth building. The accountability gap exists because the person who could fill it doesn't exist in most businesses. So here's what you can do. Pick one technology investment from the last 12
months, one tool, one system or one project and ask three questions. What did it cost in total? What was it supposed to change? And what has actually changed? If you can't answer the third question, that's your starting point. Not a technology problem, but a measurement problem. And measurement problem is something you can quite easily fix.
“Every line item in a business has accountability attached to it except one and it's been growing the fastest.”
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