• Measuring the business value provided by IT is very challenging.
• You have a number of metrics, but they may not be truly meaningful, contextual, or actionable.
• You know you need more than a single metric to tell the whole story. You also suspect that metrics from different systems combined will tell an even fuller story.
• You are being asked to provide information from different levels of management, for different audiences, conveying different information.

Our Advice

Critical Insight

• Many organizations collect metrics to validate they are keeping the lights on. But the Infrastructure and Operations managers who are benefitting the most are taking steps to ensure they are getting the right metrics to help them make decisions, manage costs, and plan for change.
• Complaints about metrics are often rooted in managers wading through too many individual metrics, wrong metrics, or data that they simply can’t trust.
• Info-Tech surveyed and interviewed a number of Infrastructure managers, CIOs, and IT leaders to understand how they are leveraging metrics. Successful organizations are using metrics for everything from capacity planning to solving customer service issues to troubleshooting system failures.

Impact and Result

• Manage metrics so they don’t become time wasters and instead provide real value.
• Identify the types of metrics you need to focus on.
• Build a metrics process to ensure you are collecting the right metrics and getting data you can use to save time and make better decisions.