IT Chargeback/Trackback: Yes, You Need It

The only real way to get a true picture of IT costs is to pull the plug and see how much gets done without IT.

Sadly this only happens during outages or you have some muppet mess up a upgrade or the like. You then get to see the true costs of IT. Sadly accountants don't like IT, so they get boxed in with reduced budgets and outsourcing etc as the accountant can get his bonus saying he helped save money for the company. This is hostorical as accountants use dto have vast pools of people playing with calculators - they got replaced by computers and the accountant suddely had his empire reduced to nothing. this is historicaly why accountants hate IT and also in many ways why IT does itself no favours in company culture by highlighting what value they actualy do bring to the table.

It is easy to make up some value and cross-charge and then the head of the department your cross charging goes and says I can employee a pimple head for half that price for twice the hours and get that done - ignoreing that the cost actualy involves being at hand 27/7 of there working day and unseen work. So a good IT department is one you never have any dealing with as they fix the problems before they happen. This goes on for a while and it is so easy for other department heads to claim they don't need internal IT and outsource it, either officialy or by subcontracting to there mates etc behind IT's back. This sadly happens way to often. Good IT people are good at IT and not good at explaining why there good and what value they bring. It is only when IT goes wrong that it is costable and then IT gets the blame. Basicly IT is dammed if it does work and dammed if it don't work. This is why IT in so many companies are treated like shite and the days of fair pay for the skills involved compared to somebody who works in say HR who to gain that skillset requires less intellegence has gone adrift. People have a PC mentality and as such pay Penut Compensation leading to lots of IT people who realy should not even be trusted with anything electrical, let alone rolling out production patch's or the like.

How do you cost yoru IT worth to another department. Ask the department how long it will take to do without a computer of any form and thats your answear. Any other approach is a false economy based upon delusional managment abstracted from reality.