After the Thaw: Opportunities and Issues for IT in Technology Companies

Flexible Budgeting

In the fast-paced world of high tech, traditional financial planning and reporting systems are too cumbersome to be responsive to the needs of the business. As a result, some high-tech companies have adopted more agile planning methods, such as continuous forecasting, in lieu of traditional methods such as budgeting. High-tech companies, and businesses with similar needs, should move to virtually real-time planning, reporting and measurement systems to improve control and business performance.

Factors limiting the financial management capability of fast-paced businesses are the traditional budgeting methods and the use of stale historical information and spreadsheets as a tool for planning, budgeting and reporting. Discussions with high-tech companies indicate that the majority have moved their planning and reporting systems to more agile and responsive methods. High-tech companies tend to be more innovative in deploying technology solutions for internal use, and financial management is a mission-critical activity that has benefited from this approach.

Instead of making spending and resource allocation decisions based on history and outdated budgets, high-tech businesses have adopted more responsive planning and reporting methods. One of the key methods involved is forecasting, which is used in lieu of the classic annual budgeting process. In general, a majority of companies have moved to rolling budgets - updating the planning data monthly or quarterly based on revised assumptions and current operating conditions. High-tech companies tend to go further to accommodate dynamic market conditions and rapid product innovation, moving to virtually continuous planning or forecasting in lieu of a budgeting process.

Outsourced Tech Support and Entitlement

Performing entitlement prior to providing support is critical to avoid supporting customers with no contract or with an expired warranty. When outsourcing technical support, allowing the outsourcer to perform customer entitlement means giving the outsourced agents access to the customer information stored in an internal customer relationship management (CRMCRM) system. This can be accomplished by granting browse-only access to the CRM system, transferring information to an outsourcer system or using a CRM vendor's partner relationship management (PRM) tool if available. Alles zu CRM auf CIO.de

Companies should start with the outsourcer to understand how it prefers to work and to determine the costs associated with various methods for allowing agents access to the entitlement data.

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