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The use of managerial control ratios for benchmarking IT costs is widely accepted. This installment of Accounting Matters informs CIOs about IT managerial control ratios and the assumptions underlying the use of these ratios in IT cost benchmarking. Incorrect use of these ratios and violation of the assumptions can lead to faulty inferences and costly mistakes. This article proposes a technique for benchmarking IT costs to draw the right conclusions from the data.

Increasingly, employees are innovating with their own consumer technologies (such as smartphones and tablets), rather than looking to their companies' IT departments to lead technical innovation. This can give rise to tension between employees and IT departments, and this tension is particularly pronounced in the US military, where long systems development times run headlong into young, technology-savvy soldiers arriving in camp with smartphones, sophisticated applications, and high expectations. In this case study, this phenomenon plays out in the person of a US Army Captain who, using resources obtained via the Internet and while on a tour of duty in Afghanistan, develops and sells an inexpensive iPhone application - Tactical NAV - that provides soldiers with a sophisticated navigation tool.

The Walsham hotel is an upscale hotel, located in a large southern city. Its clientele have high expectations and, given the Walsham's urban location, likely includes many senior executives. The case focuses on the hotel's Director of Rooms and, in particular, the hotel's profitable mini-bar department. A major face-lift for the property's rooms provides an opportunity to replace the refrigeration units in the mini-bar, units that have been in place for over 10 years. The Director is considering either a more energy-efficient version of the current unit or a much more expensive unit, the KN346. The latter has some interesting electronic features including sensing technology and peer-to-peer networking that, together, would permit remote real-time access to the mini-bar inventory. This unit could drive down labor costs, reduce disagreements at check-out, improve customer service, and allow personalized mini-bar stocking. The case is arranged in four parts. Only Part A should be distributed in advance. Part B should be distributed only after Part A is discussed. Parts C and D could be similarly distributed only after discussion of their preceding parts.