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Cloud computing may have caused interest in IT chargeback to resurge, but the core elements of the chargeback process haven't changed in 30 years, according to Charlie Johnson, proprietor of CNJohnson & Associates Inc., a financial and systems consultancy in Phelan, Calif. "Technology changes, and you need a new tool to "measure the cloud," he said, but chargeback best practices are about vision, not technology.

"I believe there's a certain core of best practices, but it needs to be flexible because every [company] is a little different, depending upon what their goals are," said Johnson, who will present a session on chargeback best practices at the Information Technology Financial Management Association conference in Harrisburg, Pa., this month. "A lot of the time, people don't have a clear vision for what they want to do," he said, and when that's the case, "there's a high probability it's not going to work."

Johnson, who founded his consultancy in 1992 after the bank where he was responsible for the chargeback process was acquired, is implementing a chargeback system at a global credit company. There, the multiple computing platforms make the job "complex, but fun," he said.

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