This my view of IT.  All People, Hardware, Software, Telecomm, and Facilities expenses rollup to a simple dashboard.  I am constantly looking for ways to provide more capability for less money.  It gives you a good indication on where your IT spend is in relation to the business' revenue.  Your Finance group can run reports and build the dashboard with "actuals" so you can see how you are doing.  For our professional services business of 225 people, I try to stay in the 6-8% of net revenue range for our IT spend, though in a tight economy we see how low we can go.  In my opinion, it's better to budget a fixed amount each year and consistenly improve your capabilities.  That way you don't have a huge catch-up all in one year.

If I think we are getting too far out of whack on one category, I start looking for solutions to get it back in whack.