In all forms of business and within every sector on Earth, the illusive Return on Investment (ROI) haunts C-Level executives down to project, program and portfolio managers. In IT and Marketing, two traditional “cost-centers” perpetually under the microscope of the Chief Financial Officer, ROI often becomes the main ingredient in every project and activity regardless of size.
Several years ago while helping to run the IT part of a small company, it was determined that the move from ROI to VOIP would be a cost-save of $10 million US dollars per month. Within the week, the CFO and CEO ordered a portfolio of 67 IT projects to stop so the upgrade could happen, intentionally inconveniencing millions of customers.
It was a little later that the urgency of the decision was elaborated. That $10 million per month allowed finance to restructure the yearly earnings statement to show our organization exceeding our 17% growth goal. This increase helped lead to a slightly better acquisition evaluation that following year, and the company was sold to a private investor for much more than it was really worth.
This story illustrates the power of calculating proper ROI for an initiative in IT. However, it further illustrates the power of cost-saving technologies like a password manager solutions.
Password manager, like VOIP, off-load the cost burdens of inefficient processes and wasted workforce management. Password manager provides your company with the ability to efficiently manage access control of multiple related, but independent software systems. With password manager, a user logs in once and gains access to all systems without being prompted to log in again for each web based app they would like to sign into.
Password manager increases your ROI in three ways:
- Decreases the idol time your Help Desk spends at odd-hours responding to password issues..
- Increases productivity of your IT staff by freeing up their time for new projects.
- Improves and stabilizes current and future reporting on IT costs by altering a variable cost into a fixed cost.
Outsourcing your password manager can further off-load the burden of installing, running and maintaining a Password Management System within your firewalls. And the ROI is simple. Simply calculate the FTE (or human capital per hour) spent on your current infrastructure addressing password management. That number minus the cost of outsourcing the password manager is essentially your ROI.
Putting It All Together
Information Technology is a powerful enabler of ROI. The Hypersocket software suite of products is a series of solutions built on the Hypersocket Framework an open source project that enables rapid development of web-based JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) with granular role-based access controls based on the principle of least privilege.
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This Blog was brought to you by Hypersocket and its CEO, Lee David Painter. With over 20 years of industry experience as a pioneer in IT Security, Lee developed the world’s first OpenSource browser-based SSL VPN (SSL-Explorer). Today Lee runs Hypersocket, a leader in virtual private network technology.
