3 Ways to Save money and Increase productivity

by Matthew Carmen on October 25, 2010

For most companies, Information Technology is not their core business.  IT is, however, one of the biggest factors by which a company can differentiate itself from its competitors.  By using technology wisely, companies can automate many of their processes, allowing its labor force to focus attention on new products and services for both external and internal clients.  Capital funding is required to accomplish this, and in this economy this means reallocation of current funds, not an addition of new funds for a companies IT department.  It is a proven fact that good investments in IT facilitate rapid company growth.

As with most other departments within a corporation, IT runs on human resources – labor.  Therefore, the last thing a company should look to do when wanting to save or reallocate capital is to cut its labor force.  Once the labor force is cut, it is very hard to get back the productivity in the future.  When this happens, most IT departments become very reactive – they end up fighting the many fires that crop up and have little time to implement new technologies that could benefit the entire company.

Decimating a labor force – though providing significant short term financial savings – inhibits corporate growth.  With this in mind, what areas within IT should companies consider to free up funds for growth initiatives?

  1. Managed sourcing options for routine activities.  By routine activities I mean regular processes such as batch computing, monitoring of the IT environment, network connectivity and maintaining the physical environment.  Most of these are important areas that tend to be labor-intensive activities.  Within IT, the monitoring, network and physical management of the datacenter tend to have the largest staff of any group.  By considering managed services, a company can get high quality service and typically good pricing areas as well.  With the savings, labor can be added to groups that are doing application development and other innovative services which stimulate business growth.
  2. Implement tight asset management procedures.  By tracking a company’s software and hardware assets, existing assets can then be utilized more efficiently.   On the software side, a company needs to know what it owns, what piece of equipment it is running on, and how much of the total purchase it owns is actually being used.  Having an inventory system will allow the user community access to all of this information, and encourages the use of existing inventory instead of always buying more simply because a new project has budget money.  By implementing a rigorous asset management system, companies waste a lot less – often as much as 20% – on new purchases and maintenance of those new purchases.  These savings can likewise be used for continued corporate growth.
  3. Going green can provide great cost savings. One way companies can become “greener” is through server virtualization.  By vitalizing servers, companies can save much needed capital on two fronts.  First, by having fewer physical devices in your datacenter, less electricity will be used, thereby lowering the company’s electricity costs.  Secondly, many states and utility companies offer rebates and/or lower rates for electricity for companies who virtualize their server farms.  For example, one utility in Wisconsin offers a rebate of $250 per virtualized server.   Through the use of VMware or similar product can, if engineered correctly, reduce the physical presence of a server farm down by as much as 20 percent – serious savings can continue on well into the future.

All in all, there are several ways in which a company can save much needed capital without reducing the workforce, then reallocate the capital in such a way as to stimulate new growth.   Yes, certain positions may be deemed as unnecessary and the workload shifted to managed service providers or the like, but overall, the company will be able to use more of its skilled teams for forward-thinking growth opportunities. Such initiatives, which can be funded by cutting wasteful spending, work seamlessly with careful planning and execution.

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