another company’s customer and this new way of doing business has formed a vicious circle.
One of our customer who approached us for building an alternative to existing supplier, demanded for an interesting value proposition:
- You can work on the existing rates, but we want you to utilize resources with higher experience and quality
- Or you can match the existing resource quality and work at lower rates
“Same cost, higher value or same value, lower cost” is an indication of the new thought process among organisations.
Organisations can seize this opportunity to change the way in which they used to invest in and run IT systems.
Develop systems for all seasons: When growth and speed were the most used words in business, companies used to consider “quick scaling up” as key criteria in designing & procuring IT systems. When the recession tenure forced scaling down or status-co, some organisations were finding it extremely difficult to justify the investment and operational cost on IT. Architecture of IT systems needed for supporting the organization’s operations need to be:
- Focused on Scalability and Maintainability for supporting growth
- Supporting economies of scale to justify minimized scale of operations
Focus on core competence: Many Organisations built enormous skill sets and capabilities in specific IT products, at times on a tactical mode. Though the incremental cost of adding an employee on the rolls looks lower compared to an outsourced solution, the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) would definitely have a different dimension. While an Organisation need to build its own set of resources for operation and maintenance of mission critical IT applications (like ERP, DCS), often companies end up building teams and infrastructure to match capabilities of an IT service organisation. Prudent approach would be to retain only those skills which form vital part of business and are difficult to segregate & outsource.
Working with the right partner works: Down turn has prompted many companies to relook at the trusted saying - “Big is beautiful”. A fine balance of Stability and Agility is what companies look for in a right partner now. A new genre of Focused & Professional organisations are giving the IT behemoths a run for money by providing better ROI, increased attention, Comfort level and flexibility.
Pragmatic timelines: Studies out reveal the fact that 8 out of 10 IT projects do not get completed on time. This definitely points to ambitious project execution timelines which would have been planned. An over ambitious plan is quite costly with respect to early procurement of systems, extra cost for higher execution speed and project not going live when business demands it. It would make sense for IT project owners to plan for practical completion timelines with sufficient time cushion for meeting exigencies.
