It’s no secret strategy when organizations put a hamper on all possible spending during a recession. Budgets are cut, staff hours are reduced, and purchases on new equipment and innovation are often eliminated. During difficult economic times, cost-cutting measures are expected, even necessary for companies struggling to survive. But suspending investments in certain areas of your business, like technology, can prove shortsighted. Eliminating system replacements, PC and software upgrades, and IT service budgets, may well worsen an organization’s predicament. Here are 5 reasons technology shouldn’t be forgotten during a recession:
1: Equipment still wears out
As bad as an economic recession becomes, one fact doesn’t change; Power supplies, hard disks, motherboards, displays, and other components still fail. The laws of physics don’t rest just because the economy is in turmoil. Electrical surges still occur, mechanical failures continue, and planned obsolescence keeps marching along. Simply put, PCs, servers, network components, and other business-critical items will fail, even in a recession. This equipment must be replaced.
2: Productivity becomes critical
As companies downsize and restructure, staff are often responsible for multiple jobs. Those old, entry-level Celeron- or Pentium-powered PCs with 256MB of RAM and rattling power supplies won’t help managers efficiently complete expanded task lists. Nor will such machines enable overworked colleagues to run QuickBooks, CRM applications, or proprietary programs smoothly. When you’re forced to do more with less, your equipment becomes the backbone of your day-to-day operations, and having reliable hardware and software that is supported is paramount.
3: Downtime is expensive
Outages and downtime are even more acutely felt during tough economic downturns, when fewer staff are available to diagnose the failure, identify appropriate fixes, obtain replacement parts, replace the failed component, and then test the repair. Meanwhile, other employees facing more burdensome task lists are dead in the water. Their productivity drops to zero. Depending upon the situation, a single failure can prevent employees from accessing CRM systems, entering sales, billing clients, printing invoices, answering customer inquiries, processing claims, dispatching service personnel, and otherwise fulfilling critical operations. Sales plunge, revenue is lost, and an organization’s financial standing declines.
4: Competition suffers, too
Your competitors are suffering, too. If your organization can leverage their weaknesses during turbulent economic periods, it can capture rivals’ market share. Exploiting weaknesses and maximizing opportunities in tough financial environments often isn’t possible, however, without the proper technology.
5: Manufacturers offer discounts
Just like everyone else, computer manufacturers are facing hard times. Manufacturers are scrambling to develop intriguing new product lines, and improved, cost-efficient distribution. In the interim, deals are available for the taking. Organizations shouldn’t feel obligated to pay a posted online price for a new PC or pay the first price presented for a new server. Due to current economic conditions, sales representatives are more likely than ever to rework pricing for businesses needing new equipment. Now is the time to replace those outdated systems discussed earlier.
