Business planning and reporting are the weakest ITAM disciplines

Best practice

Business planning and reporting are the weakest ITAM disciplines

We’ve just had our 200^th organization go through our online 12 Box Maturity Assessment – so I thought I’d share the average scores across the 12 competency areas.

Introduction

The 12 Box Model from the ITAM Review is a framework for understanding ITAM and assessing the maturity of your organization. The maturity model test is FREE and available here.

The 12 competency areas are explained in detail with practical examples and case studies in Practical ITAM the book.

Two hundred organizations have completed the self-assessment, which involves evaluating five statements for each of the 12 competency areas. On average it takes 21 minutes to complete.

People, Process and Technology

The 12 competency areas span People, Process and Technology ITAM requirements. Across 200 organizations the average respondent is better at Process, followed by Technology, with People very close behind.

Best and Worst

As per the diagram below – Strongest competencies across the 12 areas were Dependencies and Transition. We’ve discussed this at our UK conference in the past, suggesting strength in dependencies and transition might be because of strong ITSM processes in this area that ITAM is benefitting from. Entitlement and Inventory were also stronger, the bread and butter of any ITAM practice.

Reclaim is weak, which is quite disappointing given it underpins one of the biggest areas for ROI in ITAM – by clawing back unused hardware and software. Reclaim of software is difficult to execute without good technology, permissions and resources to actually remove software.

Verification is also weak, suggesting that organizations are leaving themselves exposed to being undermined by a third party (Internal audit, stakeholder, or outside auditor) which may blow holes in their data.

Weakest of all across 200 organizations were planning and reporting. Reporting is key to demonstrate progress, keep the team motivated, keep stakeholders engaged and demonstrate execution to the “Authority”. Without a good business plan and reporting, ITAM teams run the risk of running out of steam and losing senior management attention.

What do you think? Why are planning and reporting so weak compare to the other ten disciplines? Please leave a comment with your ideas.

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