Final answer:
To support the cost analysis effort at Agency Y, comprehensive approaches including employee surveys, interviews with staff and managers, consultations with external professionals, cost/benefit analysis, field research for pricing data, stakeholder engagement, and a root cause analysis should be employed to identify potential savings.
Step-by-step explanation:
To support the cost analysis effort for Agency Y in identifying potential savings opportunities, several research methods can be employed. Firstly, conducting surveys among employees can provide insight into the areas where costs can be reduced without negatively impacting operations. Additionally, one-on-one or group interviews with staff currently in relevant positions, their peers, and supervisors, can offer a deeper understanding of the skills and resources that are necessary for the job as well as where inefficiencies or redundancies may exist.
Furthermore, consulting with external professionals in the field of cost reduction and IT management can provide authoritative perspectives and innovative solutions that internal staff might overlook. A cost/benefit analysis is another critical step in this process, which involves weighing marginal costs against marginal benefits to determine the value of potential changes. To gather pricing data, field research to collect information on the current costs of IT services and components similar to data collection from stores and surveys for rents can be replicated to understand the market rates and potential alternatives that could offer cost savings.
Lastly, engaging with customers and other stakeholders to understand the impact of any potential changes on service quality is important. Also, performing a root cause analysis can help identify the underlying issues leading to high operational costs in the current IT systems.