IT departments are still not delivering what the
business needs, according to Forrester Consulting.
A survey of 389 IT decision makers in the UK, Germany, France,
the US and China found that on average IT departments fail to meet
service level agreements with the business 26% of the time.
The study, commissioned by Compuware, found there is still too
little co-ordination and dialogue between IT and their business
colleagues.
Service level metrics are still very IT-centric and demonstrate
little alignment with business needs, the Forrester report
said.
Some 47% of respondents said service levels were missed because
application performance problems present at launch were never
resolved.
Jean-Pierre Garbani, vice-president and principal analyst at
Forrester Research, said, "The ultimate judge of IT and business
alignment is the end-user."
He said the only way IT knows it is meeting end-user
expectations is by measuring the availability, usability, and
accuracy of the business applications from an end-user
perspective.
Fifty seven per cent of respondents said
poor application performance cost the business money through
lost production and poor sales performance.
They said it also negatively impacts customer satisfaction,
hurts brand image, hinders strategic decision making and impedes
product development.
The report said that measuring the quality of service is not as
automated as it could be, and that most enterprises do not
understand the value of end-user experience monitoring or how to
implement it.
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