Leveraging Technology in a Struggling Economy
7/12/2010

We met with a new prospective client a few weeks ago. The story was the same. Business was bad....really bad and that corporate layoffs were just around the corner. Cuts in production. Cuts in benefits. Cuts in budgets and do more-with-less-type meetings were almost daily. Job consolidation seemed to be the biggest theme and now the 'how's' of getting it done needed to be answered....soon.

At first it lay at the laps of Operations and Finance. They were the ones who could determine what needed to stay and what could be let go, but as the structure of current daily operations unfolded, it was clear that there would be serious gaps in production, administration and quality. As a business that built their reputation on dependability and quality, it was soon made clear that a new way of day-to-day operations had to be re-invented....and it starts and ends with IT.

There are many companies we have visited and worked with that although are not considered 'inefficient' by any means because their staffs work extremely hard, are somewhat myopic when it comes to how to leverage one's IT infrastructure to its advantage. Case in point, a medium sized engineering/construction company had their Controller with 3 computers on his desk. One for Internet/Email and Microsoft Office, one for their production software monitoring projects and also sales, and a 3rd, not networked [or backed up] with the multi-million dollar company's financial software. CD's were actually burned and re-loaded from machine to machine to update each system's new information. Scary actually in any economy.

Leveraging one's business technology sometimes takes drastic situations to see that you need a little help and guidance on how to get there. A lot of organizations already have their infrastructures in place yet the technology firms that installed them never explained exactly how to utilize more than 20% of what the systems full capabilities are. During an initial walkthrough at a medium-sized law firm client, they wanted to know about getting into the system remotely for their attorneys so they could access files and billing software, but little did they realize they already had a full blown Citrix server. I mean, they knew they had it, but had no clue why and how/what it did. They were just told they needed it.

In today's economy, it is paramount for success, and even survival, to know the technology assets that your organization has and more so how to use them to make life easier, more efficient and productive. In many cases it just takes a little time to sit down and blueprint your infrastructure and perform the due diligence internally, or with an outside engineer/consultant to demonstrate how technology can benefit the entire company.

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