"The shift has been dramatic," said Darlington. "Line-of-business budgets have given way to cross-line-of-business budgets, and often they extend fully across the enterprise."

IT spending is now reviewed corporately at the most senior levels of the organization. To enable 'apples to apples' comparison of projects, T&S has worked with Finance to create a methodology - a tool - to objectively compare investment opportunities. This enables BMO to assess and understand the cost and value to the organization as a whole of the various options presented to it.

The result is that BMO is no longer investing in IT that responds to the needs simply of one particular line of business, delivery channel, pool of customers, or geographical segment.

"It comes down to economies of scale," said Darlington. "We look for opportunities to leverage the technologies implemented in one part of the bank so that it can be used in other parts. We are on the right road to maximizing the value of all or our IT investments."

Manage Supply; Manage Demand

With a centralized IT function, BMO is in a better position to exercise discipline and control of what Darlington calls the "two bookends" of IT expenditures. The first bookend is supply management - a function that is commonplace in most IT-intensive companies today. The second bookend is demand management, and this is much more rare - especially in companies that have not weaned themselves off the technology acquisition habits of the 1990s.