ABSTRACT
Senior management is frequently perplexed by the problem of establishing the level of financial resources to devote to data processing activity. Since data processing services are used throughout an organisation to support the various divisions and departments that may exist, it follows that the process of creating budgets is difficult and requires multilateral communication. The charge-back mechanism should be used to encourage user departments to rationalise their requests for this type of development work. The data processing manager will be able to plan his resources more effectively if users are prepared to signify their need for ad hoc information by paying for it. Some large multidivisional organisations have established their computing department as a service company to provide the services of software and systems development to the various divisions, and to operate as a computer bureau to run the production systems as a routine service.
