The challenge of IT

IT executives have numerous challenges, including the following top four:

• Managing IT as a business
• Aligning the IT infrastructure, projects, and goals to the business priorities
• Finding the budget to meet corporate objectives set by the C-suite
• Meeting compliance in all areas—from industry to financial to IT to cyber

Often, the biggest hurdle, which sums up all of the preceding challenges, is the "do more with less" mandate. Even when profits are up and there is a significant growth, IT budgets don't often grow at the same increased percentage that allows IT to pace with the projects and changes needed in the organization.

ITAM is pivotal to fusing IT with business users. IT assets are supplied and maintained in a manner that facilitates the execution of business goals. Financial accountability and savings through life cycle asset management become a shared success with the business team. ITAM becomes not only the central lynchpin holding together IT, project management, and corporate strategic direction but also the strategic solution that brings IT leaders to the C-level.

Functionally, IT as a business center translates into cost-efficiency while improving service delivery, mitigating risk, and demonstrating business value. As a business process, ITAM has been already working with all the groups enterprise-wide, assisting with or, in some cases, becoming the solution to manage financials, contracts, and business deliverables. The ability to manage targeted assets and tracking the overall inventory and relationships between the assets closes the loop to the operational aspects of IT.

Strategically, ITAM can become the executive dashboard that gives you a holistic view into your organization. ITAM can help identify efficiencies, inefficiencies, and gaps not only in the traditional world of IT, but also in HR, project management, service-oriented functions, and cyber threats.