Benchmarking allows RBC to document the areas where its efficiency and costs are improving and to show the effect of activities that were started since the last benchmark, Swadley says. Still, he doesn't recommend benchmarking any particular area more often than once every two or three years, since IT departments need to allow enough time for any operational changes they might implement to bear fruit.

Motoring past maintenance

When Rich Hoffman joined Hyundai Motor America in Fountain Valley, Calif., as CIO in early 2003, about 90 percent of the company's annual IT spending was going to maintenance and operations, and just 10 percent was earmarked for projects that were deemed important by its business leaders.

Hoffman immediately set a goal of driving half of all IT spending into discretionary projects.

By October of that year, 49 percent of Hyundai's IT spending was being pumped into new projects. How was Hoffman able to turn the ship around so quickly? Two ways: by tracking its internal and contract labor resources more effectively, and by enacting more stringent quality-control requirements around Hyundai's application-development projects, he says.