Investing in IT during the downturn
Tim Landgrave
Published: 18 Feb 2003 14:15 GMT
During an economic downturn, it's very difficult to convince a CEO or a board of directors to implement new technologies. But given proper justification, good executives will realise that the companies that build through a recession will emerge in a better competitive position than those that simply attempt to hoard cash and survive. The key for IT leaders is to take the right approach with common technology and cash flow problems by viewing the issues through the eyes of those upper-level executives.
Playing the numbers game
I recently spoke with the VP of sales at a Fortune 500 company who's eager to roll out laptops to his 500 salespeople over the next six months. To minimise his upfront cash payout, he'd like to lease the equipment over three years. But he's running into two problems.
First, he wants lease payments that match his rollout schedule. In other words, he doesn't want to make lease payments on all of the 500 systems after the first month when only 100 of them have actually been deployed. Ideally, he'd prefer a system where the first 100 are 36-month leases, the second 100 are 35-month leases, etc., so that he's only paying for the time they're in use, and all of the leases terminate at the same time. Yet it's not a scenario endorsed by either vendors or finance companies, and this needs to change. Both vendors and lenders need to find ways to work together to accommodate companies willing to spend money on new technology during hard economic times. The ones that do will come out of the recession with more booked business than the ones that try to hold the line.
The sales leader's second problem is one that IT managers have dealt with for years -- how do you roll out technology with a long-term lifespan and keep equipment consistent over its lifetime? While Intel and AMD continue turning out chips that break new gigahertz barriers (now over 3 GHz), the average business consumer can work comfortably on machines with significantly less processing power. In fact, the majority of companies have desktop and laptop computers with less than 1 GHz of processing speed and don't suffer for lack of processor power.
So what's the extra 2 GHz for, and is it needed? The chip companies have decided that consumers need high-speed, hyperthreaded (Intel) machines in order to process pictures and videos. That's quite a change from a few years ago, when business-computing requirements for "feeds and speeds" drove the needs of the consumer. Now the perceived consumer requirement for faster processors gives the chip companies the opportunity to drive excess computing power down the throats of their business customers.
How much technology is enough?
During the likely rollout of this VP's sales force automation project, Intel will release at least two more processors (or processor speeds) and at least one more chip set. If the project rolls out over six months, how does he make sure that all of the technology stays consistent in the field?
One option is to standardise on a single laptop with a predefined configuration. But if he buys up front to guarantee availability, then he's overpaying for the laptops. System prices drop -- sometimes dramatically -- over the six-month rollout period. And keeping the processor, disk storage, and installed memory consistent are the least of his concerns. System manufacturers routinely update system bios and video bios in laptops as part of an ongoing effort to improve performance and reduce cost. These changes will most likely create configuration inconsistencies that a company's IT staff will burn time trying to chase down and rectify.
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