Buyers' Guide
ROI: The business case for activating AMT
Published: 10 Dec 2008, 11:58am
It's easy to list the benefits of better desktop management, but how does it affect the bottom line? Finding out is a matter of doing the sums - and the answers may surprise you.
"People don't want to do the maths - but they have to," says Stuart Dommett, enterprise client product manager at Intel.
In their day to day work, IT managers use performance metrics to measure how well their systems are working, and that works very well. But when it comes to setting strategy and justifying strategic purchases, they have to do a different sort of maths: total cost of ownership (TCO), and return on investment (ROI) calculations.
"TCO is for cost-justification to measure the cost of IT to the business, but ROI is the measure of benefits versus cost - this is the justification of why you are going to implement a particular strategy," says Dommett.
Put simply, ROI is the point where IT meets the rest of the company. It's the basis of any strategy talks between the IT department and the finance director.
ROI – doing the maths
But the maths needn’t be scary and a well-worked ROI proposal can start a dialogue - anything that suggests financial savings will get the finance director's interest.
Any ROI calculation is simple enough. Measure your current costs, and then look very carefully at the proposed new technology, and the way it would change things if you implemented it. How would it reduce your costs? How much it will cost to purchase and implement? What is the impact to your operational metrics and what is the value of that in monetary terms?
You have to work out these costs and benefits for each year in the technology's lifespan. If the cumulative difference between the two is positive and if the difference is large enough - within a reasonable time - then your CFO should approve the technology.
Most technologies have a high initial cost to implement, but then savings pile up during their lifetime. As we know from our home life, a more efficient central heating boiler might save hundreds of pounds a year, but could cost thousands of pounds to install. The ROI will be negative for a couple of years, and then be positive.
Costs of activating AMT
AMT is far easier to cost justify, because the initial costs are actually small. The basic price for AMT agents are very low: 20 to 30 per cent of business PCs being purchased today include the technology as standard, at no discernible extra cost. It’s a case of switching it on.
There are costs, of course, when you start to use AMT. They include:
- turning it on, which takes about two minutes for each PC, but will require up front integration work with your architecture and existing PC build process and image
- configuring your management software to take advantage of it. Most desktop management software already handles AMT; if you don't have desktop management software, you will need to add in a licence cost
- AMT training for the IT staff. Include your helpdesk staff, get a realistic estimate for how much training they need (many organisations find four hours is about right), and get a quote. Include the cost of the staff time
- the cost of any consulting you need, to take advantage of AMT in your business processes
- the cost of implementing any changes you decide on
Add up the benefits
Against this, you can set the savings AMT makes. This involves working out the current cost of auditing, patching, software maintenance, diagnostics and repair, and on security protection software.
You then need to know the cost of these things when supported by AMT. Check any real life customer case studies you can find, such as the University of Plymouth. Some case studies include detailed ROI calculations, like the one prepared by the State of Indiana.
If you need more specific details, carry out a short trial with a few of your own PCs.
Then calculate the overall impact on your costs over time. The roll-out of AMT could take a period of time as new PCs bring it into the company. In the first year, therefore, you may only have a small proportion of your PCs equipped with AMT and make a small saving, but this will increase in later years, as AMT penetrates through your whole fleet of PCs.
The ROI calculator
If all that seems complicated there is an online ROI estimator, which gives a good graphical idea of the savings you might get from AMT. Simply push the sliders to meet your company's figures. How many PCs do you have, and how quickly are you updating them? What is the cost of your staff, and their training? The results show the cost of your desktops during the successive years of AMT rollout.
It's not a complete ROI calculation, but it will give a good idea what sort of figures you might achieve using AMT, and could form the basis of your own detailed ROI calculation.
Where to get more help
There are companies that can help you with implementing AMT. Whether that is assistance in the initial assesment, helping with your overall desktop strategy or build and deployment services. You can work with your management console vendor, PC vendor or from specialist companies. They are all tooled up to help you realise the benefits. You can also do it yourself using the tools and information that is being developed by the IT communities forum here.
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