Top Ten Keys to ESM Success
*Think Small: Set realistic, targeted goals, and implement the best technology and practices to achieve those goals. Break large projects up into parallel efforts. Don’t bite off more than you can chew.
*Consider Staffing Requirements: Skilled labor is the key to effective implementation; it takes time and money to train employees, and more money to bring in experts from outside.
*Get Quick Results: Don’t undertake projects where the results may take a year or more to show up; by then, business imperatives (not to mention management) may have changed, leaving the project without support.
*Plan Before Implementing: Take the time to do a thorough requirements analysis, cost justification and vendor/product evaluation. It will pay big dividends down the line.
*Standardize the Managed Environment: To the extent possible, ensure that IT staff follows standard practices, and that managed technologies have standard configurations, so that management is consistent across the environment prior to automation.
*Centralize Management: To the extent possible, centralize management to eliminate duplicated efforts and ensure common practices across the enterprise.
*Offer a Business-Focused Cost Justification: Demonstrating the project’s effect on the bottom line helps ensure buy-in from top management and business units. Better to be a value-added service provider than an efficient cost center.
*Don’t Rely on Technology: There are no "magic bullets." ESM is hard work; it requires discipline and organization.
*Understand the TCO of ESM: To get a return on investment, you first have to make an investment, and the TCO of that investment is far greater than the cost of the hardware/software.
*Plan for The Future: Focus on cost-avoidance, not cost-reduction. Chances are, your management responsibility will be increasing in size and scope. By increasing IT staff productivity and automating labor-intensive processes, ESM should provide a foundation for savings down the line.
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