Five tips for IT Managers to Manage the Economic Downturn

Intelliden Inc., a networking solution provider has briefed 5 key strategies that can help both the network and technology manager to monitor the current economic downturn and strategize such a way that the company performs better during economic upturn.

• Control cost without compromising the business: Technology Managers should consider the technologies that saves the cost. If you have a resource constraint, Network automation is a good choice. Automation of key network configuration management, compliance and provisioning processes helps companies to achieve more. Companies can also get the maximum of ROI from the past investments by recovering lost network assets.
• Simplify your technology: Recession is the time when you can simplify IT architectures, systems and processes. If the system is less in number, then it will be easier to manage with lesser people. You can simplify the technology environment by adopting commercial-off-the-shelf methodology. This way you can train your employees for fewer application for completion and longer term cost of support.
• Look for shorter payback period for your investment: Any kind of investment should be closely monitored during recession time. You should look for a payback period of twelve months of less for any new technology investment. It is going to be extremely difficult to get fund for new investments with payback periods of more than 12 months or more.
• Secure your network and IT assets: Since, the economy is going through a recession period, fraud and crime wil lincrease. This means the threat of cybercrime, data breaches, hacking, malware, phishing or knowledge theft are the list of some of the activities. If you do not have proper protection, this can result in unnecessary cost for your company during this bad period. So, you need to pay attention for better network security compliance, network authentication, traffic routing and system access, and more audit tracking.
• Keep on innovating: You have to be creative and innovative during recession time. This is the ideal time to make plan and focus on key issues. Recession time is also perfect time to revisit your business model to determine the strength of the company and if required, you can outsource some of the non-core activities. Innovative solution always draws attention to the higher authority. For example, you can adopt Unified Communications, Telepresence, VoIP to lower the cost.