Maximizing returns on infrastructure investments is top of mind today. Part of meeting that goal is developing efficient business processes that will carry companies into the next decade. Here are recent reports, events and research that will help IT leaders automate business processes and optimize costs with creative new approaches.

• Summer Camp: Sharpen your skills in performance management, strategic planning and automation by attending a Balanced Scorecard Bootcamp in July. According to the sponsor, The Balanced Scorecard organization, the one-week, intensive course combines introductory and advanced courses and covers a wide range of topics. These include:


• Organizational development
• Change management and communications planning
• Strategic planning, objectives and strategy mapping
• Performance measures and target-setting
• Strategic-initiative prioritization, automation, cascading
• Strategic management
The courses are recommended for those in business, government and nonprofit organizations. The bootcamp will be held in Washington, D.C., July 13-17. Certification and introductory classes will be also held in Los Angeles and Washington during July. Get the details here. 


• Retail forum: Senior IT executives in the retail industry will meet for an exclusive knowledge-sharing forum August 9-11 in La Jolla, Calif. Among the topics to be discussed at this invitation-only event are strategic IT advances, mobile technologies, SaaS, video analytics and multichannel management. The IT Leadership Summit is hosted by the National Retail Federation.



• A Recipe for IT Management: Adopting an IT management framework can be a confusing task. A new report from Forrester, "Unraveling ISO, CMM, and ITIL®, IT Management Frameworks," may help you sort through the options. One recipe that's recommended: Combine CMM with ITIL and Six Sigma for best results. Forrester interviewed approximately 30 user companies about their experiences with these multiple IT management frameworks and concluded that making the transition "from a technology-led, siloed structure to a process-centric, service-oriented organization" won't be easy. Nevertheless, it is critical and worthwhile, given the "global economic crisis, increasing sensitivity to cost, and competitive pressures." IT services must be managed and delivered with high levels of customer service and satisfaction, Forrester reports. Read the executive summary.

• Network Automation: IT executives know firsthand the tremendous need for automation of the myriad tasks associated with network management. Manual deployment of the hundreds of devices needed to run and manage today's networks is "labor-intensive, costly, error-prone and difficult to track," according to a recent report from Computer Economics. The organization found that: "Even in the current climate, more than half of all IT organizations are investing in network automation tools" and more than 70 percent of all IT organizations have already deployed them or are in the process of implementing them. Learn more details here.


• Lean Business Value: View a Lean IT video to learn how CIOs — such as those at Tesco and Fujitsu — are applying these principles to drive greater business value. It also describes new CA products and solutions that will drive Lean IT goals. Watch the video here.

  



• Smart Books:

• IT Adventures: Adventures of an IT Leader is a spring book release from Harvard Business School Press. The book is written by Robert Austin, Professor at Copenhagen Business School and Associate Professor at Harvard Business School, where he chairs the executive education program for CIOs. It describes how even an effective IT manager faces a host of challenges — from anticipating emerging technology to managing relationships with vendors, employees and other managers. Based on true events, the book can be read from beginning to end, or treated as a series of case studies about crisis management, security and technology-adoption issues. Co-authors include Richard Nolan, also a Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, and Shannon O'Donnell, a consultant with Cutter Consortium's Innovation Practice and Visiting Researcher at

  

  Copenhagen Business School's Centre for Art and Leadership.


• Also look for two new IT books coming from Harvard Business School Press in the next few months. In July, "IT Savvy, What Top Executives Must Know to Go from Pain to Gain," by Peter Weill and Jeanne W. Ross, Professors at the MIT Center for Information Systems Research, will debut.
  

• In October, another MIT Professor, George Westerman, teams with Gartner's Richard Hunter in the release of their new book, The Real Business of IT. Read the descriptions.

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