Information Systems Management and Budgeting

Presented by

Jim McKenna

Technology Services Manager, Morrison & Foerster LLP

Goals of Information Systems, Management, and Budgeting

• Continually influence management through past performance, progress in the present, and future deliverables.

• Demonstrated excellence at whatever your technology department is focussed upon.

• To always know what has happened, what is happening, and what will happen.

Why use them?

• What you don’t know, will hurt you.

• Surprises in business are rarely positive.

• Sometimes the bigger cat does not hear “uncle”.

What are information systems?

• Any mechanism which provides data.

• They account for activity.

• Help identify trends

• Offer a glimpse of the future.

What’s a budget?

• Summary of spending activity.

• Tool to help allocate time, talent, and priority.

• A financial foundation for the future.

How do you combine the two? Think of building a house.

• What will it’s selling price be?

• What’s the location like?

• What fits into the existing neighborhood?

• Draw out the finished product first.

What happens when you combine the two?

Past Present FutureWhat

happenedKeeps you on

trackPredict

When did itoccur

Focuses yourdecisions

Justify

How much itcost

Realtimeadjustments

Always readywith answers

What happens when you don’t?

• If they don’t work together, you may be missing the “big picture”.

• It is possible to have different systems fully operational, but not integrated properly.

Budgeting Methodologies:what will work best for you?

• Singular bucket

• Multi bucket

• Time based

• Top down

• Bottom up

• Zero based

How do you create a budget from scratch?

• Zero based

• Spanning years

• Ratio based– qualified FTE’s– number of devices

• COLA budgeting

• Percent of revenues

• Model best practices

What is Predictive management and budgeting?

• Multi year budget

• Staffing

• Budgetary expenditures/cash flows

• Ranking of deliverables

• “What if” flexibility

Where can you get data?

• Financial reports

• Existing budget

• Formal and informal feedback

•H.R. reports

•Vendors/Web

•Tickets/Tags

•Best Practices

Assembling your Information Systems

• Think “Chinese Menu” of results– Funding of this

amount– Delivers these results

• Start simple, grow where necessary, and prune regularly.

• Chart of accounts

• Standard vocabulary

• Standard time reference

• How will you measure “time and talent”?

What type of metrics should you look at?

• Cost per employee

• Cost per supported device

• Uptime

• Internal informal R.O.I.

• Ratio of I.T. folks to employees

• Cost per initiative (measure of value)

• Cost per lawyer

What do you use at your Firm?

• Everything must work together.

• Look out for interdependencies.

• Practice your processes before they are needed.

Make sure to look at both function and process

What should you track?

• Expense• Capital• Projects• Talent• Time• Failures, impediments,

scope creep

“You never want to come up short”

How do you classify work?

Critical HighValue

Enhancements,not critical

Maintenance

Admin

Development

Construction

How often should you deliver?• A magic number is 12:

– 2 Home runs

– 1 Triple

– 3 Doubles

– 6 singles

• Ideally one happens each month.

Either be on base or scoring

Turning data into information• Effective

summaries.

• Graphics.

• Web access.

Always be able to answer “what am I getting for my money”?

•Consistently updated.

•Standard reporting mechanisms.

•Regularly delivered

How to make plans reality

• Equipment Standards• Dedicated Project

Manager• Regular standardized

reports and presentations

• Staff development– 50% of time/$ to

improve skills in existing job

– 30% for assignment du jour

– 20% for next job

Have the answer before the question is asked

Activity Time: Group Solutions• Break into groups, introduce yourselves,

and become best friends.

• You will be assigned an objective, strength, and weakness.

• Create your solution.

• Share “how, why, when, cost” etc.