Please write about paper discuss/talk about it. 100 word count, due in 24 hours.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
© University of Phoenix 2010 It’s About Value, Not Cost Page 1
In IT, an up-front cost can have lasting value, explains Robert Fort. IT and business alignment focus
on the big picture.
ID: 50V101226001145007 It’s About Value, Not Cost
SOURCE
2004-2010, 50 Lessons Ltd.
CATEGORY
Business and Economics
SUB-CATEGORY
Finance
SPEAKER
Robert Fort
SPEAKER TITLE
Chief Information Officer, VP of
Information Technology
ORGANIZATION
Virgin Entertainment Group
TAGS
Arts & Entertainment
At Virgin we’ve not focused on the cost of IT so much, but on the value IT can bring. That’s
one of the things I’ve been most proud of. Our digital listening stations that affect the
customer experience have helped drive sales. Our data warehouse has helped drive sales.
While you think that might be a pretty much behind-the-scenes, backroom operation or
system, it’s helping our sales associates to understand the customer behavior that’s in the
store that particular day much better, and it helps them to maximize sales.
I’ve always taken my IT department and tried to focus it most on the top line–driving the
sales and so forth. Inherent in everything we do, though, is to try to control costs. Certainly
we don’t want to be spending a dollar that we don’t need to spend. When I look at what’s
going on with the economy, it’s not been presented to us as major a challenge as always,
because we have a lot of our costs in line. Certainly when the total company starts taking a
hit, we have to start looking at issues and things that we can resolve.
That’s where business and IT alignment come back to play. I don’t think that an IT
department can take out its own costs without having worked with the business and
understood the business. Can it forgo these particular services and applications that we
might have to cut out? Or is the business going to make some cuts in this particular area
that might help save us some IT costs? That IT business alignment question goes both
ways.