Execution – the Last of the Es: Having skilled personnel and management, including governance, in place is another foundational element of picking consolidation targets. Budget constraints, investment scrutiny and customer satisfaction concerns necessitate investigation of this final and likely the most expensive criterion.

Execution – the Last of the Es: Having skilled personnel and management, including governance, in place is another foundational element of picking consolidation targets. Budget constraints, investment scrutiny and customer satisfaction concerns necessitate investigation of this final and likely the most expensive criterion.

Exposure – the Fourth of the Es: Black swan  events are highly improbable but highly consequential events that can only be explained in retrospect. While these outlier events are non-computable and unpredictable by definition, the good news is most negative events can be effectively modeled. Crafting the Continuity of Operations Plan (COOP) should be one of the top priorities of the CIO’s team.

Expenditure – the First of the Es: The basic principle of finance is a dollar spent today is more expensive than a dollar spent tomorrow due to cost of capital. Furthermore, tomorrow’s innovations will likely render today’s technology  cheaper in future (think Moore’s law). CIOs, in partnership with their CFOs, should balance the need for consolidation today with savings that postponement can bring. Likewise, they should scrutinize the relative merits of cost saving alternatives.

The 5E Framework for Targeted IT Consolidation – First in a Series: Ted Levitt, a marketing author, observed “People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole!” When considering IT consolidation, it’s easy to be snared in the vicious circle of how, when and what.