Saving money and cutting cost in your Information Technology Department is critical. With the Global Economy in a recession, your department will have to cut cost and streamline the way it operates. Obtaining true ROI on services and products is essential.
The Current Economic Situation vs. Solutions
With the current economic situation, information technology and information systems is not immune to layoffs. With technology expanding every day, information technology and information system professionals must look at becoming even more versatile than ever.
Regardless of the IT structure being used in your corporation, you must look at and focus on job roles. If your department is diverse enough to be divided by job roles, it is now time to overlap and cross train your entire staff. Help desk staff should be cross trained with network personnel and each role needs to be evaluated on how that particular job can be divided up with other departments.
Your department should put all non critical projects on hold and overtime should come to a complete stop. Projects that involve the improvement of products and directly affect sales of goods needs to analyzed for the true return of investment (ROI). True ROI comes from the calculation of not just a product that is lower in operational cost but in the calculation of training the end users and all of the IT personnel.
Understanding ROI
If your ROI (Return of Investment) is going to take a year, this could be too long. Look for product or services that allows an ROI to be immediately seen.
If you are going to save $10,000 over a year, this could be too expensive and the return may take too long. If you need to train several hundred users in groups of twenty, the cost and expense with the current pressing economic situation could take years to see the savings. Calculating the hourly wage when looking at ROI will not give you the true cost of training. Your Human Resources department can give you a true cost per hour based on benefits, bonuses and wages.
Although training is an absolute necessitiy, doing so can be very expensive and have a direct impact on your product or services' ROI. The cost of long term ownership needs to be weighed against initial cost. Will firmware or software updates create a need for training? Often programs will go through several revisions that are minor over a period of time. Major updates often require end user and IT support personnel training.
Saving Money
- Combine IT / IS Departments
- Recycle computer parts when available
- Use green IT technology
- Stop overtime / Cross train where possible
- Replace computers, laptops and phones only when absolutely necessary
- Stop in - house training and use email, newsletters, collaboration and eLearning
- Do not purchase gadgets that are not truly productive
Conclusion
The days of nearly unlimited Information Technology spending and training are long gone. Information Technology departments like all businesses and departments need to save money and watch budgets while maintaining quality. Regardless of how you save money, never sacrifice security or quality.