Ten Steps to Modifying User Behavior and Reducing IT Costs

October 25, 2004 (Computerworld) In an economic climate of slow and cautious growth, IT is under intense pressure to manage costs and ensure that spending is well aligned with business drivers. Essentially, IT is being asked to run itself as a business -- allocating resources where they will generate the most value while minimizing resources from nonproductive areas.
One way to achieve this resource conservation and alignment is to increase efficiency. But that's only half the battle. To truly optimize the business value returned by its investment dollars, IT must also manage, measure and control the utilization of its services. After all, when end users burn up IT service capacity in ways that don't return value, the result is waste, regardless of how efficiently IT may be operating.
Demand management -- the modification of end-user behavior by making business units financially accountable for their consumption of resources -- is the next generation of best practices for enterprise IT service management. Steps can be taken to keep end users from consuming IT capacity in ways that don't make good business sense. And by incorporating these strategies into enterprise IT service management mechanisms, IT can run itself more like a profit-making business and less like a subsidized utility.
Usually, IT isn't in a position to say no or to curb demand for the resources it stewards. IT must change the environment so that it isn't driven by requests. Human dynamics will play a large role in this change. People modify their behavior only when they feel some sort of negative or positive impact. But it will be necessary to change not only the number of requests but also the nature of the requests made to IT. This can best be done by giving users on the business side the information they need to make informed decisions.
The 10 steps to demand management are:

1. Document the services you provide to the business community as a whole and to the individuals in it.


2. Document the service levels that are expected. Service-level agreements can work both ways. You may want to set limits on the number of pages printed, the number or size of e-mails, the amount of storage used or some other demand that IT has historically had difficulty reining in. Your billing engine should have the flexibility to invoke penalty charges.


3. Redefine these services in alignment with business goals.


4. Place a price tag on these services in line with your financial criteria.


5. Measure usage of resources, including hardware and personnel.


6. Design a service catalog with multiple choices at different price points. (For example, offer both five- and seven-day support, or let users choose among various sizes of e-mail boxes.) Offering options is important to drive user consumption and to ensure service levels.


7. Define the workflow tasks and approvals needed to provision the services being offered.


8. Provide cost allocation/chargeback reports or invoices to the business units.


9. Provide self-service and self-help alternatives such as Web-based knowledge bases.


10. Provide the tools to support the services and measure customer satisfaction.

These steps give the user community and business managers the tools they need to modify their own behavior or "buying" patterns. They can see what services are being used by their employees, how well service levels are being met and how this affects their budgets. They have alternatives to calling the help desk. And they are presented with easy-to-use systems that remove the temptation to do an end run around support procedures.
If you take these steps, you will be well on your way to changing the behavior patterns within your organization.
Stevie Sacks is a software architect at Computer Associates International Inc. who works extensively with clients to understand their needs and channel efforts to bring maximum value to their organizations in the areas of Unicenter IT service management and server management.