The cost prioritization rule most IT teams miss (and why it matters)

Hi,

Most IT cost exercises start with good intentions and end up drowning in data.

You pull every invoice, every contract, every forecast line… and suddenly you’re three weeks deep trying to make sense of hundreds of small items that will never move the needle.

Here’s the filter we use on every engagement to avoid exactly that trap:

Focus 80% of your effort only on services that represent more than 0.5% of your total scoped annual spend (we call these Critical). Give solid attention to anything between 0.1% and 0.5% (Important). Everything below that can wait, or often doesn’t need deep analysis at all.

This single rule changes the game.

Instead of spreading yourself thin across noise, you concentrate on the top services that actually drive the majority of your spend and your risk. The rest becomes background.

I see this daily. DC Ops Head who inherited a €22M scope, 76 services. When we applied this filter, we discovered that just 40% services accounted for over 96% of the total spend.

We focused the entire effort onto those. Within few weeks we had a draft clean baseline and clear opportunities we could review with the IT Head.

The smaller items didn’t disappear, they were simply handled with much lighter touch in a second stage.

If you’re currently in (or about to start) any kind of cost review or budget exercise, try this filter this week:

Take your services by spend and ask: “Which of these are genuinely above 0.5% of my total annual IT spend?”

You’ll usually find the impact work is much smaller, and much more valuable, than it first appears.

If you want a second pair of eyes on where your real value drivers actually sit, I’m happy to take a quick look with you.

→ Book a no-pitch 30-minute IT Cost Transparency Diagnostic here: https://calendly.com/alexandre-gay-b-g-associates

No slides. No sales pitch. Just a clear view of where your biggest opportunities probably are.

Talk soon, 

Alexandre Gay Managing Director, BG&A