Costs reduced and user satisfaction up says benchmarking summary

But the report also says that the reductions in cost - ICT spend per user has dropped by 15.75% in real terms since 2008 and by 19.3% since 2006 - are worrying.

Organisations should be maintaining or even increasing ICT spend at the current time, it says, in order to achieve larger savings through ICT facilitated developments like pervasive flexible working, shared services, application of lean thinking, and e-procurement.

The reductions in spending suggest that top management teams do not take this view, or doubt the ability of ICT to deliver. The report says this could be explained by weaknesses of ICT governance, and in particular, the reluctance of ICT leaders to focus on benefits realisation.

ICT managers must ensure that project appraisal and benefits realisation management place responsibility fairly. Blaming ICT when a service fails to get the benefits it promised from a project saps the credibility of the ICT function, militates against investment in new ICT-enabled transformational projects, and limits the organisation's ability to deliver savings without cutting front line services.

The report concludes that ICT functions must pay greater attention to project management rigour, and top management must attend to the governance regime within which the organisation selects and invests in ICT projects. Service managers must in turn take full responsibility for improving the business processes that they control and getting the best out of IT investment.

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