Business Objective:
The IT philosophy of Agilent is to conduct its business on-line, in real time using the internet and the state of the art technology currently available in the market, with the objective of being an efficient enterprise. The primary objective of any organization is to increase revenue and decrease cost simultaneously. It is to be kept in mind, that due to the rapid changes in technology, an IT investment cannot be planned for more than 5 years. Agilent is in a position to make an investment of $39M with the intent to fully benefit from it within the next five years.
Analysis of Projects Portfolio:
There are several methods to perform IT projects portfolio analysis. However, Ward’s methodology categorizes IT investments by the role they play in the organization and the expected contribution they will make to business performance. It is simpler to implement and easy to comprehend. For the reasons stated earlier, it is the ideal candidate to analyze Agilent’s portfolio. Based on Wards’ criteria Agilent’s projects could be grouped as follows.
Strategic Investment | High Potential Investment | Factory Investment | Support Investment | Project #2: SAP | Project #8: XML Conversion | Project #4: Web Upgrade | Project #5:Oracle Licenses | Project #3: SalesForce.com | Project #1: Seibel | Project #6: SAP-SC | Project #7: HP IT Monitoring |
Conclusion:
Agilent’s budget is $ 39M and it has been assumed that the 39 million dollar will be available over five years, and the amount spent each year would be flexible and in total would not exceed the gross budget. Projects that tangibly decrease cost and increase revenues are of high priority. The following projects are selected: Project #2: SAP, Project #3: SalesForce.com, Project #4: Web Upgrade, Project #5:Oracle Licenses, and Project #6: SAP-SC. The total cost of these projects is approximately 34.75 million dollars, which is well within the