Is it possible to reduce costs by investing in technology?
After a few years of steep uprising, when the Brazilian economy finally seemed to have found the path to achieve the growth, the situation has suddenly reverted and surprised most people. The negative change now requires patience, creativity and wisdom on the part of those who want to face the crisis and come out stronger. Many companies took advantage of the economic growth to invest in productivity and now they have the challenge of making their company more competitive so as not to lose the market.
On this scenario of difficulties, thinking about investing in times as the one we are living might not sound good for many. Talking about investing in information technology, may sound even crazier, especially for the more conservative ones. However, against all odds, many companies have realized that it is precisely in the IT area that they could find the answers to the difficulties. Executives have realized that, with a good planning, it is possible to define advantages that not only can make the company storm-resistant but can also cause it to get through the end of the crisis even stronger and more competitive.
After all with investments in technology it is possible to avoid losses with forgone sales caused by failures in processes and systems. For some companies it’s hard enough to sell, imagine losing sales that were already guaranteed due to technical problems?
Want to know how? Check these…
First steps
The initiative of making an IT investment requires attention to the real needs of the company, while it is necessary to have clarity on the existing processes. During planning it is necessary to respond to the triple question: what can be eliminated, what should be kept, what should be improved?
It is possible that the answers lead to the conclusion that it is often more advantageous to invest in new software, compatible with current technologies, than to continue spending with maintenance for old systems.
Having these in mind, it is possible to search the market for a software that is in tune with the new technologies and that is able to consistently support the processes your company needs, also thinking about the challenges that such software will face at present and in the future. To this end, it is necessary to always bear in mind that the idea is not just to support the time of financial stress but, to the extent that reality allows, also use it to improve performance, recover losses and increase the volume of business.
Current technology
Currently, there are three keywords which should be valued: integration, mobility and flexibility. In line with these principles, for example, we can find products that were transformed into services, the devices that have become mobile and the cloud computing, among other solutions that can lower the company’s expenses, at the same time that they optimize the processes.
Services
Much of what was once sold as a product can now be purchased as a service. This possibility is developed on three ends: programs that are rented, equipment that are rented and entire platforms that can be rented.
With the software on demand (or SaaS) the company can hire programs that are on a remote server, which allows it to be hired only what actually will be used and without the need of spending on licenses. The same thing could happen with all the infrastructure, or infrastructure as a service (or IaaS), which allows a remote data center to be rented, without the need to purchase equipment. Yet, today it is possible to make use of the platform as a service (or PaaS), which allows the entire platform to be hired.
Note that this alternative is not the same to all companies. Each scenario involves different issues to be analyzed. While this path can mean reduced costs for some companies, it could mean an increase for others. That is why decision makers need to know their technological park very well.
Monitoring IT environments and business processes
Investment in IT resources are always expensive and end up immobilizing the capital. Worst of all is if the investment your company made is not being taken advantage of in its entirety. For example: equipment failures that support the main business systems can generate often incalculable financial losses, cause losses with forgone sales and users/customers dissatisfied. Real-time monitoring of all technologies is important so that your investments are leveraged to the fullest, and if some incident occurs the error is detected automatically and in real time. This is one of the propositions of OpMon, a software for monitoring the IT infrastructure and the business processes.
Conclusion: technology does not reduce costs, but contributes to your company so you can quit losing money with misused resources allocation or forgone sales. That is, at the end of the month the economy is the same!
Related topics:
Opservices and Qualitor create offer for cost reduction in IT operations
