Today’s CIO is faced with the important endeavour of aligning IT investments with business strategy in order to drive digital innovation. IT has become an integral component of the enterprise, as internal business units continue to rely heavily on in-house and cloud technical services to meet their objectives.

Business Units Drive IT Spend

According to a recent Gartner survey, up to 29 percent of IT spend is made by business units rather than traditional IT, and this percentage is projected to increase for the next few years. Today’s tech-savvy leaders leverage new applications to adapt to shifting market expectations quickly and seamlessly.

Business Leaders Demand Financial Clarity

Although the business units are embracing digital transformation, many of them do not recognise how their demands affect the IT budget. This puts the CIO in the difficult position of having to explain the financial impact of implementing a new technology solution. The CEO and CFO will undoubtedly expect a quantifiable analysis to determine the return on their IT investments. In the age of big data and analytics, IT executives are under more pressure than ever to generate accurate financial reports.

Forecasting Is Challenging for IT Leaders

As crucial as this quantifiable information is, a staggering number of organizations cannot fully explain their IT spend. In a recent survey by CIO Insight, only 17% of responding CIOs said they can accurately plan and forecast service demand costs. Given that number, it’s no surprise that only 28% of surveyed IT leaders claimed to be confident that their IT budget aligns with business priorities. With ITFM software solution your CIO can easily produce budgeting, planning, and forecasting numbers which can all be done seamlessly, with accuracy and speed well beyond that of manual or spreadsheet-based systems.

IT Finance Management Best Practices

In order to stay in tune with business objectives, IT leaders must form strong relationships with key business stakeholders and implement an efficient financial reporting system. With purpose-built Intelligent IT Financial Management software, IT leaders can pinpoint exactly which business units are driving their IT spend. This information equips your CIO with the information needed to evaluate the IT investments while holding internal departments accountable for how they influence the budget. Plus, your other IT business leaders can easily see if their IT spending is aligned with their priorities and strategies.

Now that affordable IT Financial Management software solutions are available, for enterprise of all sizes, the modern CIO can effectively analyse their spending and optimize their digital & IT investments, while communicating with key business leaders outside of the IT spectrum using language they understand.