WATCH · Tech Leadership & Boards_
Every Decision Was Defensible. The Total Isn’t.
Saleem Beg · Founder, Teque
● 1:40 · Posted 3 months ago
KEY TAKEAWAYS_
- Reactive purchasing means no one is accountable for what the portfolio adds up to
- The person who approved each line item is rarely responsible for the overall return
- Annual portfolio review question: if we turned this off tomorrow, what would break?
TRANSCRIPT_
Your technology spend has gone up every year for the last 5 years and I'll be surprised if it hasn't. The question worth sitting with is can you point to 5 years of proportional improvement? The number grows because there's always a reason. A new tool that was genuinely needed, a license that had to be renewed, an upgrade that couldn't be deferred. Each individual decision is
defensible. The aggregate however is not because at some point the commulative investment should be producing communive returns. In most businesses the honest answer is that it isn't. Why? Because technology decisions are made reactively not strategically. Each purchase solves a problem that exists right now. which means nobody is ever looking at the portfolio as a whole asking whether the
sum of the parts is producing anything. The person who approved each line item is almost never the person responsible for what the whole adds up to. So here is the fix. Once a year, ideally around budget time, do a technology portfolio review, not an IT audit, a business value review. For each significant system or tool, ask one question. If we turn this off tomorrow, what would
break? Anything you can't answer that question about is a candidate for removal. Anything where the answer is not much, you're already paying for that answer.
“If we turn this off tomorrow, what would break? Anything you can't answer that question about is a candidate for removal.”
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