What do you cut in these difficult times?

With the effects of the current economic climate taking hold, cutting costs is a necessity most businesses in Wales will have to face this year. It can be one of the most daunting tasks for a management team to undertake, and the need to make the right decision can determine the ongoing success of the business.

The four most common areas that companies choose to look at when faced with cutting costs are: Vendor & Outsourcer Management; Staffing & Salaries; Project Portfolio Management (PPM) and Discretionary Spending.

When considering where to cut costs, each area offers pros and cons that obviously need to be assessed in detail. Staffing and Projects offer shorter cost reduction timescales whilst Vendor and Discretionary Spending are more long term. Let’s look at the ‘gain versus pain’ of each of these options:

• Vendor/Outsourcer : High Gain/Low Pain -
  With little or no negative consequences and high gain this is the favoured option.
• Staffing : High Gain/High Pain -
  Immediate cost reductions, but a high negative impact on morale and productivity.
• Project Portfolio Management (PPM) : Low Gain/Low Pain -
  Whilst there are low negative impacts, the cost savings are harder to gain.
• Discretionary : Low Gain/High Pain -
  High risks and little payoff make this the least favourite option.

As you can see from above, by taking time to choose the best vendor and outsourcers, this option will offer the most success in reducing costs because you can take advantage of reductions in staff, training, equipment and work environments.

By outsourcing your IT to Circle IT, we can help you realise these benefits. Circle IT has highly trained engineers and consultants with expertise in specific technologies and business processes that would benefit your organisation. IT outsourcing also addresses the problem of skills shortages which regularly slows the internal delivery of IT projects.

By outsourcing your IT to a trusted partner you can cost effectively deploy IT solutions to further cut your IT costs, including:

• Telecommuting/teleconferencing
• Voice/data/network upgrade or refresh
• Server virtualization/consolidation
• Storage consolidation
• Desktop virtualization
• Web-based applications
• Collaboration technologies
• Print optimisation

With businesses progressively becoming more dependent on IT, investing in its efficient and effective management is something that can’t be sidelined. Contact Circle IT today for further information on how we can help in these uncertain times.