Overcoming Budget Resistance to Infrastructure Projects

Michael R. Wood is a Business Process Improvement & IT Strategist Independent Consultant. He is creator of the business process-improvement methodology called HELIX and founder of The Natural Intelligence Group, a strategy, process improvement and technology consulting company. He is also a CPA, has served as an Adjunct Professor in Pepperdine's Management MBA program, an Associate Professor at California Lutheran University, and on the boards of numerous professional organizations. Mr. Wood is a sought after presenter of HELIX workshops and seminars in both the U.S. and Europe.

  Strategy  

If you want to make your CEO nod off to sleep and the hair on the back of the CFOs neck stand on edge, just engage them in a conversation on how much you want to invest in IT infrastructure over the next three years without tying it to the company's business objectives.

What is it about the investment in IT infrastructure that is so troublesome to the top management of a company?  Could it be that it seems to never end or that there seems to be no way to tie it to return on investment?  Maybe it’s the maze of jargon that surrounds it.  Regardless of the reason, every CIO knows that proposing infrastructure improvement projects is pretty much an uphill battle.  But does it have to be that way? 

What if you never proposed another infrastructure project again?  What if instead you simply included infrastructure costs into strategic initiatives that directly supported core business strategies and business objectives?  When a company builds or renovates a new building it doesn’t discount away the cost of the foundation or skimp on sound architecture does it?  Yet just try to sell anyone on the idea of building a sound foundation on the merits that it would be good to have one. 

IT infrastructures, like all organizational infrastructures, exist for one reason: to insure the enterprise’s ability to grow with …

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