InformationWeek
Defining The Business Value Of Technology
May 11, 1998
Cost Managers And CaretakersBy Charles Waltner
elationship managers are just part of the revamp of Texas Instruments' IT department. The company has also crowned two utility managers as part of its new utility-management group.
Utility managers serve as caretakers for the company's computer infrastructure, says CIO Pallab Chatterjee. Unlike the consulting arm of the IT group, which concentrates on strategic IT business implementations, the utility-management group focuses on containing costs by improving the reliability and efficiencies of existing computing systems.
General goals for the group include limiting server failures, speeding E-mail delivery, and maximizing bandwidth. Utility managers also regulate the types of technology Texas Instruments puts in place. Just as relationship managers do, utility managers report to Chatterjee.
Utility managers provide relationship managers with "rules of engagement." These rules dictate the standards and other big-picture considerations all business projects need to follow, such as bandwidth load limits on WANs, the structure of client architecture, or which middleware vendors to use.
By creating a separate group to focus on maintenance, the company has already slashed operating costs: IT maintenance expenses are 12% below budget, Chatterjee says. In addition, the number of minutes spent on unscheduled repair of manufacturing computer systems has dropped to about 13 minutes per month for each of Texas Instruments' 20 factories-down from 90 minutes per factory last year.
This is big bucks, considering that Chatterjee estimates on e hour of lost productivity from a manufacturing system failure costs his company $250,000. Multiply that by 20 factories, and that amounts to more than $5 million a month in savings.
Not bad for a couple of caretakers.
Return to story, " More From IT. "
Back to News In Review
Send Us Your Feedback
Top of the Page
Home | Career | Financials | NewsFlash
Resourc e Centers | Shop Talk | Search
