>>I hope you have a deep "IN basket" too. My company increased IT expenditures by about 60% in the last year. 68% of our IT costs are for salaries, bonuses, etc. Our total IT budget is overf $100 million. Every company goes through what's happening at yours. Eventually the light bulb comes on and the IT expenditures increase. Part of it is, "How does senior management view IT. Is is an expense item that doesn't generate revenue, or is it strategic in what we are doing?" When that strategic view comes into play, the money will be there.
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>IN Basket? Heh... I haven't been able to actually see the basket beneaeth the stack for the last 6 months :) And as far as expense vs. strategy, that's been the approach I've been taking since the first of year. Alot of my backlog of work right now is sales analysis reports. So what I've been doing is I monitor the related increase in revenue generated *after* I roll something into production for the first 2 months. Then I use that info in the next budget related battle. That's been helping as far getting Corporate to listen, (i.e. "If I had another Programmer, this would of been done 2 months earlier and this $38,000 increase in revenue would be tripled by now) But I haven't quite got the light bulb to come on yet. Hopefully though, the figures Gene gave me in another reply to this thread will be the last straw I need to get the switch to flip in the other direction.


Sounds like you're going the right direction. I'm lucky, in that IS is strategic here. Corporate increased IS spending something like 68% in the last year...now over $100 million/year...BTW, salaries, etc. is about 2/3 of that. Lots is being spent on infrastructure (worldwide connectivity).