Changing the Narrative Around Business Cost Centers

In the business/accounting world there's this concept of Revenue Centers and Cost Centers. Revenue Centers are used to track revenue and Cost Centers are used to track costs. This is great until you start applying it to the intrinsice value of those groups of people.

Example: multiple companies that I've worked for in the past have treated Security, DevOps, QA/QC, and Technical Support as Cost Centers. While this may be true in a strictly accounting sense, is that really the case in a practical sense?

If so, then a quick way to cut costs is to cut out those business units. Very quickly you'll see the quality of what you produce drop, customer confidence in the product go into the toilet and you're left wonder "what happened?!"

What happened is the same thing you see in a retail store if you get rid of your loss prevention specialists. I.e., the people you hire to reduce the amount of products stolen ("shrink" in the industry).

Loss prevention is just that. It's not a "Cost Center", it's a "Loss Prevention Center". This equates to more revenue.

It's not a far stretch to say that it's a revenue center. Though I know some will balk at that.

What is loss prevention but the simple act of capturing revenue that would have otherwise been lost?

I'm sure it's not hard to see the parallels to the software world, Security, DevOps, QA/QC, and Technical Support. Especially Security, that's a little on the nose if you ask me.

These are your "loss prevention specialists". They're a loss prevention center, not a cost center. They help you capture revenue you would have otherwise lost out the door unnoticed.

And you know what? In a lot of cases these are the most important people in your organization. Treat them as so.