IT departments are failing to measure their own
performance or service levels to the business, according to new
research.
Without such basic measures in place, IT departments risk having
their major functions outsourced, analysts said.
A survey by research company Coleman-Parke for IT services
provider Dimension Data found that few firms have comprehensive
measures of performance.
Based on 200 in-depth interviews, it found that 32% of all
companies do not have any service level agreements (SLAs) in place
to measure IT department activity against a specific target.
Of those with SLAs, only 41% of CIOs report they are regularly
monitored, and only 43% regularly report on the SLAs. Overall,
those with SLAs do not appear to be undertaking a robust level of
measurement and monitoring, with only 25% of companies using SLAs
based around end-to-end measurement of service, researchers
said.
The most commonly used measurements for SLAs were non-financial
business impact measures (67%), followed by technical performance
measurements (59%).
The research also found few line-of-business managers had a
direct relationship with the IT departments.
Thirty five per cent of CIOs said they had a comprehensive and
integrated set of tools to monitor and manage key performance
metrics, such as network capacity and application availability.
However, 50% of respondents described their operations management
tool set as "partial" or "inadequate".
John Holden, senior research analyst at Butler Group, said IT
departments that did not measure their performance and service
levels to users were ripe for outsourcing. Further pressure for
greater transparency of IT performance came from an increasing need
for effective corporate governance, he added.
"There is increasing recognition that IT is having to contend
with increasing scrutiny from business. Service levels should be
part of a cyclical culture between IT and business units," he
said.
Although these ideas had been around for 30 years, Holden was
not surprised that they were not always taken up. IT directors and
CIOs who ignore these warnings risk losing their influence within
the organisation or even losing their jobs, he warned.