The Business Technology Consumer Network - Gartner's IT Cost Cutting Recommendations? You're Kidding, Right?

Gartner's IT Cost Cutting Recommendations? You're Kidding, Right?

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:

Cut people & freeze head counts,
Eliminate bonuses,
Bring in a finance person,
Control unmanaged costs,
Verify invoices,
Eliminate unused software,
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!

Eliminate bonuses? I agree with this concept absolutely. However, my “spin” on this idea is that we have come to a time in America where executive bonuses need to be eliminated and the money placed in the hands of the line & staff who are really the backbone of the enterprise.
- - Give the bonuses to the people who actually DO the work. (See my commentary about Dell's layoffs in 1^st & 2^nd quarter 2008.) Begin any cost cutting initiative by asking around your own house for ideas that will work. You will frequently find that employees are more than willing to help the company streamline—as long as they know you will withhold the job cuts until absolutely necessary.

Real World – The United States is rapidly losing all value to employee loyalty due to this kind of advice. If the employer doesn't respect their employees, it has no right to expect those employees to respect their employer. (This is only my view from 30,000 feet. My entire position is much more complex.)

Cost of this advice to you? NOTHING!

I'm Alan Plastow, CEO of The Business Technology Consumer Network. It's time that business tech consumers began working together to get serious life cycle value from the technologies we all rely on for day to day production. This series of posts will provide direct answers to Gartner's recommendations—only, we provide answers you can actually use—without throwing even more money at these very common problems. Read on for more of our cost cutting recommendations.

There are SEVEN more cost cutting concepts included in this series...

Again: There is no fee for our advice—IT COSTS YOU NOTHING. All we ask is that you sign in to our subscribers' content. (We promise not to tell ANYONE / ANYTHING about you...)