PRODUCT PROFILE
PeopleSoft and Cap Gemini's CIO OneSource

PeopleSoft is combining its new enterprise service automation (ESA) application for IT with Cap Gemini Ernst & Young's IT benchmarking and process modeling services.

The joint offering, called CIO OneSource, aims to lower IT costs by giving executives technology that can track and measure enterprise effectiveness in the system-development lifecycle, the help desk, resource use and retention, system performance and industry benchmarks.

Eye Toward ROI

The goal is to empower IT executives to "run their businesses as a value center rather than as a cost center," Richard Rodgers, PeopleSoft's director of product strategy for enterprise service automation, told CRM Buyer. "It helps CIOs better align their investments with their companies' business objectives."

Just having the right software is insufficient, Gartner (NYSE: IT) principal analyst Ted Kempf told CRM Buyer. "What's needed is the right business strategy to develop new processes and to have governance in place to make sure it works," he said.

Indeed, good project portfolio management calls for educating the CIO and other executives on how to integrate best practices into their IT departments, then "transforming the business processes that support the management and delivery of IT services with project portfolio management skills," according to a recent Gartner report.

Measuring Costs and Benefits

Combining PeopleSoft's ESA for IT software with Cap Gemini Ernst & Young's consulting services will help users better evaluate the benefit of each project and resource, said Carr Phillips, PeopleSoft's director of marketing for enterprise service automation. "CIOs can eliminate ones that are no longer strategic to the organization. They can determine which resources should be allocated toward more strategic personnel and which should be offloaded to lower-cost or help-desk personnel."

"Savings depend on the size of the organization, but actually, it's more a matter of maximizing the dollars spent," Lynn Anderson, vice president of Cap Gemini Ernst & Young's PeopleSoft services, told CRM Buyer.

Past Precedent

This is not the first joint venture intended to maximize IT effectiveness. Taking a similar tack, Lawson and Deloitte & Touche in April announced a partnership to provide business strategy services and products to CIOs at large enterprises, in an effort to help align projects with corporate strategy and prioritize projects and resources.

"Lawson and D&T share a vision that CIOs today are placed in an uncomfortable position," the Gartner report said. "They must demonstrate and communicate their division's business value, yet they do not have the tools to properly plan, prioritize, monitor, evaluate and translate their IT engagements into business terms the CEO, CFO and other business unit managers can understand."

IT Application

PeopleSoft's introduction of its enterprise service automation (ESA) technology for IT applications reflects a natural next step for the company, which set up the ESA market in 2001. The company's ESA suite is a Web-based tool designed to automate project and resource management to provide real-time visibility and control over operating costs, Rodgers said.

The new application for CIOs includes more than 50 IT-specific analytics, such as projects over budget, products predicted late and forecasted use. The technology also addresses resource retention and use, application development lifecycles, help desks and system performance management.