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.
Thought Paper:
IT Strategies in a Tough Economy When budgets are shrinking or constrained, IT has to shift its focus.
Joe Kosco Chief Operating Officer Network Automation, Inc. 654 South Western Avenue Los Angeles, CA 90005 888-786-4796 NetworkAutomation.com IT Strategies in a Tough Economy
Introduction 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. How We Got Here In a way, this has always been the case, even in the best of economic times. No department has enabled more change and dynamism than the IT department over the past 40 years, and yet it rarely gets the credit it deserves. Remember that project to improve the cash collection cycle in accounts receivable . "Good job, Accounting!" Oh, and how about that system that provides customers with faster response and better service . "Marketing, you really outdid yourself on that one!" That reminds me . we need a system that can better track the flow of goods from our suppliers so we can reduce waste and slash inventory costs . "IT, get me ROI on that project that will pay us back in six months." As these scenarios showcase, IT is seen as a necessary burden for making the rest of the business work better. But when the company is focused on weathering the storm of a depressed economy rather than expanding and enhancing operations, large IT budgets and expenditures are no longer viewed as necessary. Instead, they are prime candidates for the proverbial paring knife. But while IT faces the prospect of cutbacks, its core responsibilities are not going away. The legacy technology infrastructure put in place over a period of decades must be maintained and supported, and in many cases, modified so other departments can accomplish more with less.
2 So, with intra-company demands as high as ever and business survival at stake, a new and fundamentally different approach is needed. Naturally, CIO's and IT managers are interested in knowing what options they have. They need to know how to accomplish the seemingly impossible feat of doing more with less. There is a silver lining here. With all the improvements IT has been working on in Sales, Finance, Accounting, and Operations, it hasn't had much time to look inward. Consequently, there is a huge opportunity for improvement, and needless to say, there is a lot of low hanging fruit. Where to Begin? When deciding where to focus attention on improving efficiency and effectiveness, the first step is to understand your business processes (also referred to as work processes). Business processes are defined as the series of actions that must be executed to deliver a benefit for downstream employees or customers. Business processes can be small (i.e., involving one IT worker) or far-reaching (i.e., involving many workers, servers, applications, departments, and end users). And lest you be confused, business processes are not merely s... [download for more]
