Forbes' CIO reweights IT portfolio for growth with PPM

By Linda Tucci, Senior News Writer 22 Apr 2008 | SearchCIO.com

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"Here is why it is so important: Portfolio management is about delivering a predictable series of results to an organization. That is make-or-break for an IT department," Rambus said. IT, he added, is "long past" focusing on just keeping the lights on.

Just as with a stock portfolio, an IT portfolio should be managed to ensure the highest possible return on IT investments while mitigating risk. "We have to deliver business value. To do that consistently, you have to start with transparency," Rambus said. "Visibility is the name of the game."

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When Rambus arrived at the New York-based media company 11 months ago, opacity was the name of the game. An IT staff of about 65 was juggling 30 to 40 projects a month, with a monthly "churn" of about 10 projects. Projects were managed at the most senior level of the IT organization and most of the tracking was done in Word documents, occasionally Excel. "This was not a collaborative tool for project managers to use but a placeholder for updates on whether projects were active or completed," he said.

Rambus wanted his project teams to collaborate, but first he had to figure out what IT was up to. "You have to crawl before you can walk."

PPM imperative in down economy

Other IT professionals apparently agree, according to Boston-based AMR Research Inc. During the past 12 months, more than half the inquiries from AMR customers were related to portfolio management, AMR analyst Dennis Gaughan said. This is not surprising, given IT's batting average. AMR studies show that 2% to 15% of projects taken on by IT departments are not strategic to the business.

As the economy has soured, companies that already take a portfolio management approach to their IT investments are increasingly looking for software to automate the process, Gaughan said.

'Not a number we wanted to see'

At Forbes, Rambus and his director of technology infrastructure, Filipe Carreira, looked at a number of portfolio management tools, including CA Inc.'s Clarity. The tool "was much more than what we needed," Rambus said, and so was the price for an organization with no prior portfolio management focus.

The IT organization ended up going with PPM software from Innotas, a fast-growing provider based in San Francisco. The software is hosted, so implementation was a quick six weeks from signature to go-live day, Carreira said. Having a dedicated account manager was critical to the speedy uptake, he added.

The revelation? Maintenance projects -- the scorned "keeping the lights on" approach to IT -- accounted for 75% of the IT portfolio.

"Wow, that was not the number we wanted to see," Rambus said.

Nor, likely, did Forbes, where the competition for eyeballs and advertising dollars across its print, online and broadcast portfolio is intense. "We knew we had to do more in terms of bringing value to the organization," Rambus said. The IT team met with each of 16 customer groups within the Forbes publishing family about what IT could bring in costs savings, better processes and innovation.

One major project that came out of those talks is the rebuilding of the company's website, ForbesMedia.com, Rambus said. This is Forbes' online gateway for media buyers seeking information about ad rates, editorial content and so on before deciding whether to advertise with Forbes -- in other words, a linchpin tool for generating advertising revenue.

Let us know what you think about the story; email: Linda Tucci, Senior News Writer

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