In considering horizontal technology and vertical industry issues, there are various ways to benchmark the current IT and process level maturity of the organization against industry norms.  These include case study comparisons and industry process frameworks such as ITIL and the OMG's Business Process Maturity Model (BPMM) shown below.

Perhaps the first step in plotting a profitable technology investment course is to establish the current maintenance and lost opportunity costs.  A significant portion of the IT cost (as much as 80%) in larger businesses can be attributed to maintenance and keeping an army of programmers and support staff to tweak the 'hard wired' code spread throughout the organization. 

The timescales to develop and modify bespoke systems can also lead to significant lost opportunity - by the time the changes have been made the original business requirements have changed! Rather than fire fighting, being able to use this resource for forward looking, rapid development, business driven projects which require minimal maintenance should be a prime consideration.

Establishing the current process maturity of the organization may be a useful step in identifying improvement potential, especially if the business agility of the organization is also assessed against peers.

Reduce your IT budget, whilst increasing IT functionality and innovation

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