IT teams are increasingly being asked to do more, with less. With 50% of IT leaders reporting that their budgets are staying flat, or shrinking, it’s no surprise that ESG found “reducing costs” to be a top business initiative driving technology decisions. Lean IT organizations cannot keep up with all the enterprise demands unless they target certain functions for automation.
In this dynamic environment, strategically finding functions to automate and processes to streamline is more than just achieving efficiencies. It is an imperative for IT leaders to juggle growing system demands with budget realities.
BUILD THE CHARGEBACK BUSINESS CASE
Forbes reports that 40% of IT spending is outside of the CIO’s control. In fact, Gartner research shows that much of this spending is in non-traditionalIT areas like big data for marketing automation and sales. Yet IT is often expected to bear the budgetary burden for storage and backup of this data.
Assigning cost to the departments using the resources (a.k.a. chargebacks) is a great approach both for cost transparency as well as winning more budget control. Historically, the problem with chargebacks is that GMs and department heads challenge the cost allocations. Technology leadership may be subject to a barrage of “how did you determine my charge?”
The clear visibility that data reporting offers on data capacity and usage at the business unit, department and geography levels is the evidence technology and finance teams needs to build a chargeback process. With quantifiable reporting in place, you’ll have a perfect answer to the question “how did you determine my charge?”
AUTOMATE RECURRING REPORTING
Gartner predicts that 75% of enterprises will have more than four diverse automation technologies within their IT management portfolios by the end of 2017, up from less than 20% in 2014. Internal and regulatory reporting tasks represent ideal opportunities for automation.
Consider data backup reporting as a prime example. Tasked with everything from month-end and year-end reporting for audit and regulatory compliance to operational reviews of backup successes and failures, back up admins spend days each month writing scripts and performing manual processes to generate backup reports.
And the need for this type of reporting is only growing. According to Deloitte’s 2017 Banking Regulatoy Outlook, regulators expect banks to have “credible internal reporting and MIS that support regulatory reporting requirements.” And in healthcare, HIPAA requires all regulated organizations with electronic protected health information (e-PHI) to confirm that e-PHIs have not been alternated nor destroyed. And every industry has internal cybersecurity plans that require continual monitoring of backup and recovery operations in the event of a ransomware attack.
Automating and customizing recurring backup reporting is a simple way to improve efficiency and free up man hours for new enterprise demands.
MANAGE DATA STORAGE COSTS
Analysts forecast the enterprise storage market to grow at CAGR of 15%, driven largely by unfettered growth of data produced by digital transformation. Yet most organizations fail to evaluate exactly what information they’re housing, and if they need to keep it.
As organizations move their data to the cloud, they shift piles of ROT—redundant, obsolete, and trivial data — into the cloud as well. In the process, few businesses follow their own internal records and regulatory policies on storage periods and destruction, let alone government regulations from state-level laws on data disposal to FTC guidelines on data destruction.
However, solid reporting on data storage location, duration and content at the client and server level can empower “search and destroy” initiatives. Teams can use this reporting to zero in on and destroy eligible data – deleting it from backup infrastructure, as well as client and application storage. Regulatory compliance is ensured…all while decreasing storage capacity and costs.
DON’T JUST SURVIVE, THRIVE UNDER THE IT BUDGET CRUNCH
Flat and shrinking budgets give rise to creative opportunities to achieve operational efficiencies and cost savings. Allocating expenses through chargebacks, automating recurring reporting and destroying ROT are important strategies for managing the new normal.
Yet, not just any data backup reporting utility will work to support these “do more with less” strategies. To gain operational efficiencies and cost savings you need reporting capabilities that:
- Offer data usage visibility across business functions, business units and geographies
- Provide details on stored data volumes at the client and server level
- Reduce or remove manual reporting and script writing
- Allow for customizable reporting that adapts to your unique business requirements
Are you ready to bring these benefits into your organization? If so, we encourage you to schedule time to see a demo of the Bocada reporting product. In your native backup environment, you will immediately see just how much time, effort and storage can be saved.