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During April of 2008, at Gartner's
Emerging Technologies Conference, Gartner analysts introduced their
“recommendations” for reducing the costs of the enterprise
technology environment. Normally, I listen (admittedly with tongue
firmly in cheek) when Gartner speaks up, but this is becoming
genuinely embarrassing. Consider the following recommendations
delivered, in public, by an organization that charges an obscene
amount of cold hard cash for its advice.
New PDF Attached - Link at bottom of entry.
Once I've recounted Gartner's
highlights, I'll explain how you can cut IT costs—in any
company—without spending even more money on additional
non-solutions—and without hiring yet another outside consulting or
research group.
READ MY FULL SERIES—The materials in this, and my
other posts, are worth serious cash to you and your company.
(Or you could PAY someone for this same advice...)
Thanks to Larry Dignan, Editor in Chief
of ZDNet and Editorial Director of ZDNet sister site TechRepublic,
for the information contained in his post: IT
cost cutting 101 (April 7, 2008).
Gartner recommends that you:
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Cut people & freeze head
counts,
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Eliminate bonuses,
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Bring in a finance person,
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Control unmanaged costs,
-
Verify invoices,
-
Eliminate unused software,
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Apply more sophisticated
negotiations,
-
Introduce competition for existing
technology products,
-
Defer replacing Windows XP systems
until 2009,
Here are several of Gartner's
recommendations—carefully modified to reflect a little more
reality—along with the ideas I've been recommending for years—and
I'm not charging you $5k-$30k for the “word from on high”—actually
my recommendations are significantly better because they've been
proven on the front lines of technology asset management.
-
Cut People? Instead
of cutting people/reducing head counts, do everything you can to
keep the expertise you already have in house. The costs associated
with replacing these people can be enormous. Unless the employee is
incredibly inept, you are better off keeping them, training them,
and ensuring their loyalty than removing them.
Keep in mine that genuinely talented and genuinely loyal
members of the work force are becoming more and more difficult to
find...
Real World
- Our friends from Gartner probably do not realize that when you dump
on employees, they tend to want to dump back. Realize this:
The vast majority of people trying to cash in on the $1 million
software piracy whistle-blower rewards are precisely those former
employees (technicians and lower management) who have been
victims of cost-cutting head count reductions. And, yes, many of them
will drop a dime on you in a split second—costing you six figure
copyright and license non compliance fines and penalties as well as
damage to your reputation.
Cost
of this advice to you? NOTHING!
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