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In good economic times, success simply means keeping pace. After all, the market is demanding your company’s products and services, and your responsibility is simple: keep up with the demand no matter what it takes. Most managers, whether they are business managers or technology managers respond to this situation the same way. They hire more people to shoulder the increased load. Sales managers seek out more sales reps. Foremen bring more assembly workers online. Customer service beefs up the call center. And IT managers hire more administrators to maintain the constant flux of demands from users, applications, systems, and networks.In tough economic times, hiring your way out of a jam is not an option. There simply is no budget for adding people. And for whatever reason, the workload never seems to wane the way business can. The company’s revenues may be in decline, but the number of server crashes remains the same. And somebody has got to fix it now! To make matters even worse, a certain moodiness can pervade the workplace that makes users even more demanding and less patient when the server is down, or their data isn’t ready, or the network isn’t up, or they can’t send an email. People are naturally on edge in downtimes, especially when the whiff of layoffs is in the air, so anything that gets in their way or prevents them from doing their job – ahem, IT [cough] – will take the brunt of their frustration.So what is a CIO or IT Manager to do?The obvious answer is to do more with less.
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