IT includes the costs of hardware, software, telecommunications, systems development, systems maintenance and computer operations. IUCs represent the time users spend on chores that the IT organization can't or won't deliver, such as rebooting a crashed desktop, waiting for the help desk to answer a request and then waiting for someone to fix the problem, or trying to fix a problem without anyone's assistance. Investment analysts, currency traders and top techies would consider it a blow to their status if they had to use anything but the biggest and best. Most of the excessive total cost of ownership figures can be found among those users who will be the most vocal in defending their unique computer configurations. Then there are the IUCs.
Employees waste time coping with avoidable mishaps.
They also lose productivity because they take time to do work for which they aren't qualified. The IUCs are, therefore, related to the employee's compensation and the failure of the computing infrastructure to eliminate avoidable disruptions. Cutting back on unproductive downtime, for whatever cause, can be the source of enormous savings. I believe most companies have costly users, their own equivalent of those banks' investment analysts and traders. But how fast one can slim down high TCO depends on how quickly the executives responsible for IT can halt the profligate practices that have grown along with the distribution of computing power.