IT as part of the business strategy – How IT makes a key contribution to improving business processes
The IT department at payment specialist Ingenico has a forward-looking approach. Those responsible have long since recognized the business relevance of IT and have made the transition from a rather defensive service provider to a committed business partner. Based on the advanced analytics solution COCKPIT, Ingenico creates complete transparency in the IT environment and enables a financial management view of all services and business processes from within IT. This information helps to prepare and strategically evaluate business decisions based on real cost and expenditure data.
Ingenico Payment Services relies on COCKPIT
There were enough tools for monitoring IT systems or evaluating technical data from the infrastructure. Instead, the payment specialists missed the cost transparency of their IT environment and the associated business services. They also wanted reliable forecasts on the development of the IT systems and the ability to generate automated reports. In order to implement these requirements according to their own ideas, Ingenico Payment Services decided to support the agile development of the DextraData software solution COCKPIT at a very early stage.
Worthwhile investment
One challenge right at the beginning was the inventory. To do this, it was necessary to record the IT environment in such a way that the correct view was mapped in the COCKPIT. Among other things, a uniform understanding of the framework and the grouping of services and their assignment to applications had to be created.
The commitment brought the desired success: all of the services provided to the lines of business on the IT side were structured and assigned to the applications, IT infrastructure, network components and data center resources – including the associated master and asset data. They were mapped in the COCKPIT and assigned to the IT services and business services. In addition, the newly developed, comprehensive service catalog shows which costs – including personnel costs on an FTE basis – and contract information are associated with the respective services.
Using the COCKPIT solution has many advantages for the company: Every investment requirement within IT is backed up with facts and can be passed on according to the source. The solution therefore supports the requirements of modern ITFM methods.
Relevant IT data supports business decisions
Business controlling can use the information from the CIO Cockpit to check in advance whether an investment will pay off and whether the profitability of the business process is guaranteed. In this way, the business is provided with relevant data from IT and supported with decision-making aids. Even if Ingenico does not yet use cost-by-cause cost allocation, it helps to raise awareness of IT costs in other departments.
“Many a request changes the moment the associated costs are clear and allocated to the business process or application,” smiles Richter. “That’s when people sometimes say: “I don’t need to save this for so long.”
Relief for license management and forecast planning
As part of the COCKPIT implementation, Ingenico Payment Services also optimized the onboarding process for hardware and software. Commercial and technical information is now combined in the CIO Cockpit, is clearly assigned to the devices and can be viewed across departments. It can be used, for example, for budget planning, license management or the coordination of maintenance contracts. The COCKPIT also provides valuable information for IT controlling or purchasing.
Actual comparison and predictive analytics
Snapshots save COCKPIT information in a predefined rhythm, show the current situation and can be used for cost comparisons. This information supports asset management and detailed cost analyses. “Then I look at the business process report for the last 3 months, see the storage consumption and can immediately go into the cost analysis: Aha, we’ve become more expensive there because application X has so and so much more data,” explains Richter.
Thanks to predictive analytics, decision-makers at Ingenico have valid information about the range of possible changes in costs and resources up to three months in advance. This allows undesirable developments to be identified and corrected at an early stage and risks to be minimized. These cost forecasts form a solid basis for the forecast and budget planning of the financial services provider’s IT and business services.
The COCKPIT provides further assistance in the evaluation of future developments or new business strategies through the function of simulating alternative development scenarios using daily updated data without affecting the productive environment.
Automated reports
The IT department also benefits from the reports stored in the system. Overviews and detailed plans of all assets and historical developments are exported as automated reports and shared with other departments. This noticeably reduces the workload of IT staff, facilitates asset management and supports budget planning.
One-to-one comparison – internally and with the cloud
Profitability is the top priority for all companies. Company-wide benchmarks are just as much a part of this for Ingenico as considerations about moving non-critical business services to the cloud. With the help of COCKPIT data, the rather fuzzy comparison with the costs of other country organizations can be replaced by detailed cost analyses of individual business processes.
When asked whether it would be worthwhile for Ingenico to move non-critical services to the cloud, for example, Hans-Jörg Richter can now answer more quickly and more specifically. “Before a cloud contract is concluded, it makes sense to know exactly how the resource requirements of the service will develop, or what we will pay for it internally. As I now know the exact costs for the business process, e.g. for a database and the associated technical details, I can also better assess whether operating in the cloud would be worthwhile for us.”
Hans-Jörg Richter is convinced that the use of the COCKPIT solution has already paid off for Ingenico: “This cost transparency of the entire IT infrastructure, which enables us to break everything down into products and business processes and be able to make statements at any time, is a great benefit for IT and for the entire company.”
About Ingenico
Ingenico Payment Services GmbH, based in Ratingen, Germany, specializes in card-based payment solutions. The company is the only provider in Europe to offer cashless payment for all sales channels, without exception, from a single source. In Germany alone, Ingenico processes 2.0 billion transactions per year.
We have this detailed cost transparency for the first time. There is no other tool that enables the allocation to business processes with real real-time data in this way. COCKPIT retrieves the data from the vCenter, from the storage, from the databases and the costs are always up to date.
If I am asked why IT needs more storage again, for example, I know immediately which business process has used it and can – if desired – allocate the costs directly to the correct cost center.