A New Tool for CIOs

David Wagner, Managing Editor | 6/19/2012 | 5 comments

David Wagner
How are you doing? I don’t mean you personally, though I promise we love all of our community at E2. I want to know how you are doing at your job. Is your department rocking the suburbs, or are you flushing the enterprise’s money right down the toilet? Answering that is harder than you think, isn’t it? You know your uptime numbers and other internal metrics, but how do they compare with those of your competitors? Are you doing more with less? Are you innovating better than the other guy?

Now a new tool from Dell, the Efficiency Modeling Tool (EMT), can help you figure out how you are doing.

The EMT takes into account more than 60 inputs from your IT department and compares them with industry standards and best-practices to help you figure out where your IT department is and where it needs to go. Sixty inputs seems like a lot, and depending on where your company is in its evolution, it might take a little effort. But that is part of the EMT’s success. One of its biggest advantages is that it makes a great conversation starter. Just working through the data can produce significant insights into your department.

Once you’ve got all that data into the EMT, it will give you two very powerful numbers: your Efficiency Quotient and your Impact Quotient. Why two numbers? Because IT departments improve a business in two important ways: by doing things well and by doing them cheaply. It would be easy to make a very efficient IT department that spends very little money on doing very basic things, but it wouldn’t help the business. It also wouldn’t be that hard to invest in all the latest and greatest equipment and software to make an incredibly powerful IT department that can leap tall buildings in a single bound, but could you do it without breaking the bank? The EMT will help you find a way to impact the business while remaining efficient.

Of course, none of this is random. The EMT bases its figures on what is happening at your company and at your competitors. As companies use the tool and industry practices change, the tool will change its scores, helping you continue to adapt. The tool also allows you to try what-if scenarios and see the best ways to help your company grow. What would be the real benefit of improving your virtualization rates by 25 percent? What would be the impact of lowering your costs by 5 percent? The EMT can tell you.

Obviously, we’re only scratching the surface of the tool in a blog like this. But we’ve got you covered. Go here (registration required) to see the whole whitepaper describing the tool, and see if the EMT can work for you. If you’re a CIO, consider using the tool to figure out just how you’re doing. You’ll be glad you did.

View Comments: Newest First | Oldest First | Threaded View
Akin   A New Tool for CIOs   9/17/2012 10:37:57 AM
Re: 60 Inputs ?
Hello David,

 

how does one get access to this Tool for a customer?
David Wagner   A New Tool for CIOs   6/19/2012 11:19:01 PM
Re: 60 Inputs ?
@Gigi- Definitely. though I can say that when I spoke to the folks making the tool, they were pretty firm that this isn't just a toy where you turn some knobs and find out what helps you the most. they think the process, as well as the scores, in conjunction with conversations in-house and those making the tool can really help you transform your whole department.
Gigi   A New Tool for CIOs   6/19/2012 11:16:06 PM
Re: 60 Inputs ?
David, I think for a fine tuning they are considering all the possible combination of inputs. Best analysis is possible with maximum inputs and hence a more accurate results.
David Wagner   A New Tool for CIOs   6/19/2012 10:28:11 PM
Re: 60 Inputs ?
@Nemos- the paper will do a better job of listing them, but they are the basic metrics that define your department. Some of them include simple things like the number of users, the cost of the epartment, number of servers, etc.

On one level 60, sounds like a lot, but on the other hand 60 metrics to describe the entire workings of your department actually isn't so bad if you think about it.
Nemos   A New Tool for CIOs   6/19/2012 8:16:56 PM
60 Inputs ?
" Sixty inputs seems like a lot, and depending on where your company is in its evolution"

Sixty inputs ? Why so many inputs and what kind of inputs are needed ? 



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