* IT managers in different industries have similar views on management
Vendors are always asking for information about how different vertical industries – such as manufacturing, healthcare, or financial services – vary in their use of management software. Meanwhile, buyers are looking for vendors with experience in their vertical; vendors that cannot demonstrate some industry-specific expertise are apt to be deleted from their short list.
Enterprise Management Associates has just prepared a vertical analysis of some of our research data on IT development, services, challenges, budgets and other issues. We divided up data into the five predominant industry segments (manufacturing, finance, government, service providers/telecom, and education) to examine this topic.
While we did find some significant differences among verticals, the biggest takeaway was that the similarities overrode the differences. All IT managers, whatever the industry, seem to have similar ways of using software, go through similar stages in using software to manage services, and have similar attitudes towards best practices. They also had similar blind spots towards standards, process documentation, and strategic use of management software.
Perhaps the reason for this is that management software is not like application software. The core goals of management software – better availability, better problem detection, faster remediation, better capacity management, longer mean times between failures – are not fundamentally different from one industry segment to another. By and large, all industries need the same kinds of capabilities. There is no market segment where IT managers are not under the gun to do more with less, better manage their current resources, and reduce costs and downtime. Everyone is facing the same firing squad.
That’s not to say that different companies have the same size budgets, or require the same service levels, or have the same sophistication – just that these differences are rarely reflected at the industry level.
The real criteria for IT managers should be, as always, their own company’s requirements and how well a vendor or product meets those requirements. More important than industry case studies are the product and market strengths of a vendor, and how well the products integrate into your own unique infrastructure to meet your own unique needs.
All that said, EMA did find some differences between industries. As expected, education was at the bottom of the list in spending and in the use of purchased software, and had lower than average services infrastructure. On the other hand, educational buyers had a higher percentage of their budgets available for new purchases.
The finance/insurance/accounting vertical was the most structured and had the greatest documentation of processes. (Thank you, Sarbanes-Oxley!) They also showed the largest IT budgets. However, a surprisingly large number were still relying on homegrown management software with a correspondingly high level of the budget going towards maintenance.
In terms of services management, the results were more encouraging. Here, the respondents reported a greater degree of strategic planning and organization. Overall, 70% of the respondents said they had a comprehensive set of plans for adding new systems, services, or users. They were led by the finance/accounting/insurance group, where 90% have such plans. Education was the lowest, with only 63% reporting comprehensive provisioning plans.
More detailed findings and findings on the other verticals – manufacturing, government, and service provider/telecom – are included in the report, and may be useful for both software vendors looking to hone their sales pitch and for IT managers wondering how they stack up against their competition. But the final word for vendors should be: Spend more time improving your software to meet the needs of every industry. For IT managers it should be: Look more closely at your own needs in the context of vendor industry case studies.
