The suspicion is that we're bottoming out. The economy is still tough, of course, but it might not get more terrible. Then again, Warren Buffet says we're all doomed.  I have to use my entrepreneur’s sense of never-ending optimism and say I know better than Buffet, but even with my reassurance, the message most businesses and families are getting is this: we’re still in frugal mode. For families, sadly, my only advice is fewer $4 cups of Joe.  For businesses, I have a few more ideas about how to make the most of a tight operating spend.

The obvious one is automation. Automating manual processes takes errors, wait-time and non-value-added tasks out of the equation and, in so doing, makes things run faster and at lower cost. One area of the enterprise that many people overlook for automation is communication and notification, particularly when things go wrong.

Who gets called when a server fails, a service goes out, or a disaster occurs? The people who can fix the problem, of course, but also the micromanaging CEO to let her know you've identified the issue and begun work. Then there are the customers and business users who should be warned before they call in to complain.

But even the first step of that process – finding the right person to fix the problem – is completely manual in most companies. A panicked admin leafs through a stack of excel documents or an outdated help desk list, calls them, gets to voice-mail, moves on to the next guy on the list, calls him, finds out that he's on vacation. This process continues for minutes or hours until someone finally fixes the problem. 

Why not automate?  Deliver relevent information immediately into the hands of the person who can fix the problem or instantly escalate to the next available user if necessary.  The issue gets fixed faster.  Simple.  One of our customers took up automation and saved $1.8 million in service support costs per year.  This is a company with 2,000 employees.  $1.8 million a year out of an operating budget is big bucks.

An automated Alert Management system also logs every action and will inform affected business personnel about the impact so they don’t call and harass the help desk.  The value is rapid and meaningful and that micromanaging CEO has full visibility to the issue and the restoration so she can go micromanage someone else ;-).  Automation changes everything: problems are solved, service is available, harmony breaks out. 

Lately I’ve been seeing a lot of commercials featuring Tim Gunn, the steely-haired fashion guru generally beloved by my wife and reality-TV addicts across the globe.  I’ll be honest, I don’t follow his guidance, as anyone who follows me can attest. 

However, he’s come to my attention as the spokesman for Tide’s “Total Care” brand of detergents, a line of more expensive products that promises to keep your clothes looking newer longer.

I’ve noticed this marketing trend showing up everywhere: times are tough, money’s scarce, so instead of buying brand new stuff, spend a few extra dollars to take care of what you already own to make it better.

Sales of Tide are proving that the idea appeals to economizing families. The snowballing reduction in IT spending shows the idea has also occurred to businesses. Companies are concentrating on finding ways to make the most of the software they’ve got – attempting to make existing IT processes respond faster, cost less or provide agility to the business. 

That makes projects that accelerate and streamline existing systems particularly attractive. For example, instead of tearing out your existing help desk and change systems, use an Alert Management platform to make them faster. Instead of struggling to staff extensive monitoring systems, allow Alert Management’s Mobile Gateway aspect to mobilize your workforce. In a time when you’re probably stuck with the system you’ve got, anything that makes it function better should be looked into. As Tim Gunn would say, “make it work.”
 

Dear concerned Executives,
 
In the latest secret CXO newsletter and coupon book, many of you shared your fears about staying afloat in these trying times. I understand how you feel – the world can be a scary place when everyone starts hoarding their cash and snarling when you suggest you might like some of it.
 
More and more, it seems like the question of “will you give me a large sum of money for my product?” will be met with an unequivocal “no” and possibly some hysterical laughter.  I’m here to tell you that that’s a complete misconception.

The key to selling in this climate is to help enterprises become more agile and competitive by delivering real value to their business.  Isn’t that our job anyway?  Ah, a return to the renaissance of providing value.  Your customers, especially if you’re doing any business-to-business work, are looking to cut costs and probably reallocate staff.  When times are tough, they want to be tougher, leaner and faster. They’ll buy your product if you can understand their business and provide a real return on the investment of resources and risk.

The products I’m working on can do that: they make an organization more efficient and intentional.  Alert Management is often the missing link for businesses that want to do more with less. So to be successful in this economy, do what I do: find the place in your customer’s business that’s struggling and help them shore it up.  If someone finds a way to do that for my organization, I’ll buy their product in a heartbeat – it’s worth it to me to keep my business strong and efficient in the long run.

So that’s my advice, everyone.  Good luck, we’ll be stronger for it! 

Sincerely,
Troy

People are still getting paid to sit in a room and watch a screen. And not a screen with anything good on it, either – no movies, no iPod, no IM.  Any work is good work these days, but this job contributes nothing to the success or agility of the business. It’s simply a necessary evil. Someone has to keep an eye on the status of various system and applications. All around is buzzing modern technology that keeps banks, retail chains and vast telecommunications companies running, and yet people are still sitting at a console, waiting for the light to go red.
 
This would be an unfortunate way to spend your time in 1990, an alarming use of resources in 2000, and borders on criminally inefficient in 2009. Efficiency is the name of the game in a harsh economic climate, and it simply makes no sense to give a trained IT professional a console and tell him or her to stare at it to make sure nothing goes wrong.

Keeping employees watching for problems 24/7 is also extremely expensive. By reallocating one rotation team of 12 from their 24/7 monitoring team, a major European energy provider saved $750,000 annually.  This was an easy, welcomed change to the operation.  It just required that their notification system catch up to the rest of their technology.

Automation is key: if a red light comes up on a screen, automatically send the right person information about the problem so they can fix it. Have their contact, role and scheduling information in the system already. Then let them take responsibility for that alert from their mobile phone and, better yet, use a web portal to let them enter internal systems and take action to resolve the event. Even if it wakes a user up in the middle of the night, it’s still better than staring at a blinking screen that may – horror of horrors – not even have internet access.

To learn more about the kind of cost savings increased efficiency can create, check out my latest whitepaper, 5 Ways to Increase Operational Effectiveness and Reduce Costs Through Alert Management.

President Obama’s economic stimulus plan is currently pouring billions into local and state governments. A lot is going toward construction – highways, bridges, and your usual slew of New Deal infrastructure projects. I, however, think some of that money should go in a different direction: innovation, investment in increasing the agility of the American business and, of course, software.
 
Initially, buying new software doesn’t seem like the kind of job-making initiative the President had in mind; not a lot of shovels involved. But it would be an investment in our future: not in physical roads, but instead in technical infrastructure. Let’s take this sudden windfall and invest in the technology behind public services like schools, hospitals and social programs to help them work better, faster and cheaper.

Implementing Alert Management software would allow public sector organizations like local governments to automatically call or email residents to warn of anything from a terror attack to an overdue water bill. Schools could automatically send students SMS messages about emergencies or changes in schedule and parents could be notified in real-time of important announcements. Hospitals could send out thousands of emails to a blood donor registry in seconds and allow doctors to answer health questions and concerns from patients over their mobile phones.

The increased efficiency would mean millions in savings every year, and unlike other automation initiatives, it would not result in layoffs. All these organizations are struggling to hire enough people. Wasting precious employee time on manual, repetitive tasks helps no-one, and eliminating those tasks would allow staff to move to more productive projects.

Obviously, if government and public services start buying software, the IT industry would benefit, too.  As the CEO of a software company, I certainly can’t say this didn’t occur to me. But with IT spending declining at 9% annually and technology companies slashing jobs at an alarming rate, a combined push for buying new software and revolutionizing social services seems like it would be right up Mr. Obama’s alley.
 

It’s occurred to me lately that many businesses are treating IT as a burden. "All those systems! All those strange, pale people manning all those fancy machines! Just think of the cost of pizza and coffee for that department alone! It’s time to slash funding before all the money we put into IT drags the whole business down."

When it comes to IT, I often want to shake business leaders and say, “It’s your competitive advantage, don’t you see?!” Instead of treating IT as a money pit, companies should consider the fact that a fast, efficient IT organization is the foundation of an agile business. Cutting spending across the board for IT is like shooting yourself in the foot. Current economic conditions demand intelligent investments in systems capable of supporting a changing business.

In this market, new ideas cannot get bogged down in IT. The technology and reaction-time of a company have to keep up with the decisions being issued at the top and the technical problems that result from them. Change Management has to be swift. Incident Management has to resolve events before business impact. Service Management can’t get overwhelmed.

Investing wisely in IT – making it cheaper and more efficient without making it less functional – is how businesses can differentiate themselves from their competitors. It’s how you can be faster than everyone else. And that, surely, is worth the cost of pizza and coffee.

To learn more about how AlarmPoint’s Alert Management platform supports the business, take a look at my article in BMC’s latest thought leadership book: Viewpoint, Focus on: Business Service Management (BSM).