InformationWeek.com

Welcome Guest. | Log In| Register | Membership Benefits

May 24, 1999

Vendors Offer Better Asset View

By Charles Waltner

he need for greater budget controls in IT departments is no secret. Software vendors creating tools that specifically address this need are attracting attention from competitors in other software markets, including asset management, traditional project management, and help desk.

Asset-management tools, which are typically used to keep track of hardware and certain off-the-shelf software packages, traditionally aren't linked to specific IT activities or projects, making it difficult to break out which technology investments are the most valuable. But that's changing, says Christopher Germann, a research director at Gartner Group. Asset-management software vendors, including NetBalance Inc. and MainControl Inc., have begun adding decision-support tools to their established product lineups to help analyze costs and link them with IT projects (see story, p. 140).

Help-desk vendors are also adding tools for IT departments to track costs. Remedy Corp., for example, touts Purchasing@Work for facilitating IT resource procurement and tracking, and Expenseable@Work for managing IT personnel expenses.

While such tools aren't as powerful as the more holistic IT resource planning tools, any little bit helps when it comes to tracking IT costs, says Doug Shuck, CIO at Encyclopaedia Britannica in Chicago. Shuck uses Remedy's Purchasing@Work to streamline acquisition procedures and accounting for IT supplies. Coupled with Remedy's help-desk software, any change to a resource, such as adding more memory to a PC, can be associated with a project or business initiative, providing detailed records of how much resources an IT activity required.

Shuck says Encyclopaedia Britannica's previous accounting tool didn't integrate with any other system at the company and required mostly manual information entry--a barrier to maintaining detailed records on all expenses. With Purchasing@Work, he has all the information at his fingertips. Says Shuck, "It's nice to have a real-time view of what's going on with your budget."

return to main story, "Follow The Money."