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Financial Management involves managing an IT service provider’s budgeting, accounting and charging requirements.
Benefits of Financial Management for IT:
Operational visibility, insight and superior decision making
Use as a strategic tool (to show financial visibility and accountability)
Ability to demonstrate the value of IT services (value in financial terms, quantifies the value of assets underlying the provisioning of services)
Some of the concepts associated with Financial Management include
Service valuation (quantifies a fiscal value for a service or service component)
Demand modeling (Financial Management quantifies the fluctuations of funding that result from shifts in levels of demand)
Accounting (to identify and keep track of service – oriented expenses or capital items)
Variable Cost of Dynamics (VCD) (analyzes the many variables that affect service cost, how these elements may be affected by variability, and the related changes in value that result)
Outputs of Financial management:
Planning Confidence:Financial Management aims to ensure that there is sufficient funding available for the delivery and consumption of services. The financial data generated by Financial Management provides service providers with planning confidence. Planning facilitates the financial translation and qualification of forecasted future demand for services.
Compliance:Financial Management procedures ensure the compliance of an organization with regulations and accepted business practices. Compliance ensures that proper and consistent accounting practices are followed and documented.Service Investment Analysis Model: (used throughout an organization to assess the expected value of a service, derives an indication of value for the entire lifecycle of a service, based on the value received and the costs incurred during the service's lifecycle)
From the COBIT perspective you can view Financial Management of the Information Technology the following way.
It's all part of the Plan and Organize domain which includes the following:
1. Financial Management Framework
Establish a financial framework for IT that drives budgeting and cost/benefit analysis, based on investment, service and asset portfolios. Maintain the portfolios of IT-enabled investment programmes, IT services and IT assets, which form the basis for the current IT budget. Provide input to business cases for new investments, taking into account current IT asset and service portfolios. New investments and maintenance to service and asset portfolios will influence the future IT budget. Communicate the cost and benefit aspects of these portfolios to the budget prioritisation, cost management and benefit management processes.
2. Prioritisation Within IT Budget
Implement a decision-making process to prioritise the allocation of IT resources for operations, projects and maintenance to maximise IT’s contribution to optimising the return on the enterprise’s portfolio of IT-enabled investment programmes and other IT services and assets.
3. IT Budgeting Process
Establish a process to prepare and manage a budget reflecting the priorities established by the enterprise’s portfolio of IT-enabled investment programmes, and including the ongoing costs of operating and maintaining the current infrastructure. The process should support development of an overall IT budget as well as development of budgets for individual programmes, with specific emphasis on the IT components of those programmes. The process should allow for ongoing review, refinement and approval of the overall budget and the budgets for individual programmes.
4. Cost Management
Implement a cost management process comparing actual costs to budgets. Costs should be monitored and reported. Where there are deviations, these should be identified in a timely manner and the impact of those deviations on programmes should be assessed and, together with the business sponsor of those programmes, appropriate remedial action should be taken and, if necessary, the programme business case should be updated.
5. Benefit Management
Implement a benefit monitoring process. IT’s expected contribution to business results, either as a component of IT-enabled investment programmes or as part of regular operational support, should be identified, agreed to, monitored and reported on. Reports should be reviewed and, where there are opportunities to improve IT’s contribution, appropriate actions should be defined and taken. Where changes in IT’s contribution impact the programme, or where changes to other related projects impact the programme, the programme business case should be updated.
6. IT Value Management
Work with the business to ensure that the enterprise portfolio of IT-enabled investments contains programmes that have solid business cases. Recognise that there are mandatory, sustaining and discretionary investments that differ in complexity and degree of freedom in allocating funds. IT processes should provide effective and efficient delivery of the IT components of programmes and early warning of any deviations from plan, including cost, schedule or functionality, that might impact the expected outcomes of the programmes. IT services should be executed against equitable and enforceable service level agreements. Accountability for achieving the benefits and controlling the costs is clearly assigned and monitored. Establish fair, transparent, repeatable and comparable evaluation of business cases including financial worth, the risk of not delivering a capability and the risk of not realising the expected benefits.
7. IT Portfolio Management
Actively manage with the business the portfolio of IT-enabled investment programmes required to achieve specific strategic business objectives by identifying, defining, evaluating, prioritising, selecting, initiating, managing and controlling programmes. This includes clarifying desired business outcomes, ensuring that programme objectives support achievement of the outcomes, understanding the full scope of effort required to achieve the outcomes, assigning clear accountability with supporting measures, defining projects within the programme, allocating resources and funding, delegating authority, and commissioning required projects at programme launch.
In Acquire and Implement Domain you could use the following objectives:1. Procurement Control
Develop and follow a set of procedures and standards that is consistent with the business organisation’s overall procurement process and acquisition strategy to ensure that the acquisition of IT-related infrastructure, facilities, hardware, software and services satisfies business requirements.
2. Supplier Contract Management
Set up a procedure for establishing, modifying and terminating contracts for all suppliers. The procedure should cover, at a minimum, legal, financial, organisational, documentary, performance, security, intellectual property and termination responsibilities and liabilities (including penalty clauses). All contracts and contract changes should be reviewed by legal advisors.
3. Supplier Selection
Select suppliers according to a fair and formal practice to ensure a viable best fit based on requirements that have been developed with input from the potential suppliers and agreed between the customer and the supplier(s).
In Deliver and Support domain you can attain the following objectives:1. IT Accounting
Capture and allocate actual costs according to the defined cost model. Variances between forecasts and actual costs should be analysed and reported on, in compliance with the enterprise’s financial measurement systems.
2. Cost Modelling and Charging
Based on the service definition, define a cost model that includes direct, indirect and overhead costs of services and supports the calculation of chargeback rates per service. The cost model should be in line with the enterprise’s cost accounting procedures. The IT cost model should ensure that the charging for services is identifiable, measurable and predictable by users to encourage proper use of resources. User management should be able to verify actual usage and charging of services.
3. Cost Model Maintenance
Regularly review and benchmark the appropriateness of the cost/recharge model to maintain its relevance and appropriateness to the evolving business and IT activities.
And finally you could Monitor and Evaluate the following objective:
1. Resource Management
Optimise the investment, use and allocation of IT assets through regular assessment, making sure that IT has sufficient, competent and capable resources to execute the current and future strategic objectives and keep up with business demands. Management should put clear, consistent and enforced human resources policies and procurement policies in place to ensure that resource requirements are fulfilled effectively and to conform to architecture policies and standards. The IT infrastructure should be assessed on a periodic basis to ensure that it is standardised wherever possible and interoperability exists where required.
إدارة خدمات تقنية المعلومات ( ITSM ) هو الممارسة المبنية على عملية تسعى إلى تنظيم إيصال تكنولوجيا المعلومات (IT) الخدمات مع احتياجات المؤسسة واحتياج عملائها والتركيز على تقديم الخدمات نهاية إلى نهاية باستخدام أفضل النماذج العملية الممارسة. ITIL ( مكتبة البنية التحتية ل تكنولوجيا المعلومات) وهي عبارة عن مجموعة معترف بها عالميا من أفضل الممارسات في مجال تكنولوجيا المعلومات (IT) وإدارة الخدمات .وتستند عمليات التدقيق ITSM على تحليل أربعة مؤشرات الأداء الرئيسية في طرق محددة :1- النمو والقيمة ، الذي ينطوي على تتبع نمو الإيرادات ضد الاستثمار والاستفادة منها.
2- تمسك الميزانية ، الذي ينطوي على تحقيق الاستخدام الأمثل للموارد المتاحة وتجنب النفقات غير الضرورية .
3-تأثير المخاطر، و الذي ينطوي على تحديد و تقييم عواقب المخاطر المتخذة أو تجنبها.
4- فعالية الاتصالات، و الذي ينطوي على دراسة ملاحظات العملاء وقياس رضا العملاء.
