[Case Study] State IT Agency Simplifies Cost Allocation to Gain Visibility and Trust

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In response to a set of increasingly burdensome operational inefficiencies, a state IT agency responsible for $60+ million in annual spend sought to replace its “homegrown” cost allocation system, a combination of spreadsheets and a standalone, government-specific allocation tool.

At the end of a thorough RFP process involving multiple vendors, the agency’s CIO and Cost Recovery Manager engaged Nicus to configure and implement a new allocation system powered by Nicus IT Cost Transparency — deploying the solution to a live production environment in late 2012.

This case study details the agency’s key challenges, how Nicus IT Cost Transparency was leveraged to address them, and the core benefits realized after implementation.

You can get instant, unrestricted access to the full case study here, and its key inflection points are summarized below.

Additional background on this implementation is available by contacting sales@nicus.com.

Challenges

The agency’s initiative to replace its existing cost allocation system targeted several key challenges, including:

• Excessive effort and unmitigated manual error risk in the allocation workflow
• Inability to quickly accommodate and engage stakeholders
• Reliance on lengthy, complex ad hoc analysis to answer questions and surface insights
• Inadequate visibility and traceability of spend

Results

Within months after deployment, the agency was successful in alleviating all its previous struggles, while reaping multiple strategic and tactical benefits.

Strategic Benefits:

• Created new trust and confidence in service cost allocations
• Increased the impact and frequency of new insights delivered by IT Finance
• Boosted consumer accessibility of key data through self-service, role-based reporting

Tactical Benefits:

• Saved over 3,000 analyst hours, which were quickly redirected to higher value activities
• Improved accuracy and reliability by removing manual error risk
• Enabled faster, more actionable responses to stakeholder inquiries
• Simplified execution of government mandated reporting and allocation procedures (double step-down)

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