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The Operational Effectiveness or Cost Savings Driven Business Case
This type of business case is arguably the hardest business case to make for an IAM program. Every IAM vendor will have an elaborate model that will determine the cost savings an organization can achieve by using their product. The models are typically based on factors like the number of users, the number of applications, the number of people working on IAM processes, and the number of help desk calls made to change passwords. The cost savings numbers and operational efficiencies saved seem compelling until the CFO asks the question: “How much in IT operational staff costs will we be able to cut next year?” Translated: How many positions will we be able to cut from our current IT operational work force? That question is invariably followed by a long pause and usually an incomplete answer, because it is very difficult to say with confidence that an investment in IAM will result in any meaningful reduction in staff or even hard dollar savings. This is because—for most of the activity an IAM program is designed to implement—the organization either has not been doing prior to the program or it has not been doing in an acceptable manner and therefore those functions have not been using the staff resources they should have been using. What usually happens, if the IAM program is successful, is the existing staff becomes more productive, processes and controls are more effective, and users gain access and therefore can become productive themselves sooner making the business more productive. A successful IAM program rarely results in any meaningful hard dollar return on investment (ROI) in terms of cost savings or salary saved.

That is not to say that potential efficiency gains are not valid and cannot be used in a business case. IAM programs do result in IT operational efficiencies and have the potential long-term cost savings and operational improvements, but they are rarely significant enough, timely enough, or quantifiable enough to justify the costs of the entire IAM program. Hard dollar operational efficiency gains and cost savings can be used as supporting evidence in your compelling business case and not the main theme.

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title Ravindran, 2013, p. 2
Data security, regulatory compliance, competitive advantage, productivity benefits and reduced overhead are some of the goals that can be targeted during the road map phase. (Ravindran, 2013, p. 2)

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