How To Stop IT Being Squeezed In Tough Times

Summary

Charles Abonnel reveals his business insights into IT management best practices.

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Charles Abonnel

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Charles Abonnel

It iscomplicated.  I think if you didn’t havethis connection before you’re going to find yourself in very difficult waterwhile the crisis takes place because I think once you’re in the melt downapproach you are looking at the cost money. You’re not really looking two years from now.  What – you just try to cut costs.  We’ve seen competitors trying to go to largertoss with just one minute say, “Get rid of $2 billion out of my bottom linenow.  Never mind what, how and when.  Just let’s move the cost out.”  So if you didn’t have a seat at the tablebefore that then I think it was too late. 

So one thing I thinkis important for us is to be this partner in the good days and in the bad daysso at least we have a value proposition that exists throughout the mean and thegood days so that people understand what they get.  I think the second thing is that we aretrying to reframe the commotion from costs to value and I think those are twobasic quotes.  Everybody understand thembut I think as long as you talk about IT as a cost then you’re on the wrongside of the equation.  The value of IT isvery high and it’s true in dollars and in business process but if you refer tothe value that you bring then therefore you give to the business partner thatyou have a sense of what he or she can do about it.  So I think this is very solo approach tothings but we like to only refer to what we do as a value of what we’re doing,not as a cost.

Then the third thingis everybody has to be reasonable and I think there are a lot of costs inIT.  IT has the capability in itself torationalize its costs because we are IT. So therefore we have a better handle on things and I think we need tolead the way in looking at costs at our end. So there’s a lot of old fortress that needs to be broken down and I’mnot so sure that we have done a terrific job in the past in getting out thereand say, “Okay, we could actually have good ideas to lower our maintenance,” orso on and so forth.  So the usual, “Let’soutsource everything into another country somewhere where salaries are cheap,”is just not going to cut it any longer.