5 Bill the Customers

Getting someone else to pay for the cost of your IT projects is apopular tactic used by low-margin CIOs as a way to extend the reach ofa limited budget. All it takes is imagination and businesssense.

Phil Go, CIO of Barton Malow, a Southfield, Mich.-based constructioncompany (2001 profit margin: less than 1 percent), says he needed away to differentiate his company from others in the highly competitiveconstruction field without draining his $5 million budget. He mappedout a strategy for using IT to speed up construction projects, a planthat could put his company ahead of rivals. But his budget would onlygo so far. So he decided to deal with the cost of technology the sameway his company managed the cost of concrete or labor crews: He billedthe client.

"We are a professional services firm," Go says. "When IT projectsrelate to a client's construction contract, we pass the cost on tothem."

Go began using an ASP (though he declined to say which one) to handleall aspects of project management, a move that few other constructioncompanies have made. The result: Buildings are completed on scheduleabout 50 percent more often than they used to be. He also set up a WANat each construction site that maximized efficiency by linking theconstruction sites to Barton Malow's headquarters.