Welcome Home, Mom

I think the current crisis is a great thing to have happened. Mom necessity
who is undoubtedly the mother of all inventions had gone away to nobody knows
where, and the CIOs and IT vendors literally had a bull run all these years. I
know of so many cases where IT heads could ask for and get anything they wanted
in the name of bringing leading edge to the organization. In the last few years
at least they were being asked to show some sort of an RoI plan before
purchasing IT products. Alas, the time has come when the finance manager has
thrown up his hands. No funds is an everyplace story now.

It is not that the CIOs and their internal users were wasting money, but
surely there was no real pressure on them to be innovative. There was no great
pressure on the sales head to cut travel costs. There was no pressure on the HR
head to trim training costs. There was no pressure on the admin head to chop
communication costs. But wherever there were pressures, they were conveyed to
the IT headsguys who only offered standard and proven solutions, acquiring cost
of which was often prohibitive. Thank God we are beyond that stage. The time has
now come when users as well as the CIOs will have to innovative to survive. And
I believe that this will stand them in good stead in the long run.

Ibrahim Ahmad ibrahima@cybermedia.co.in

How I remembered Mom Necessity is interesting. I got a call from a
non-descript company saying that they have a software by which corporate
training costs go down by almost 70%. Its online, can be done during and after
office, and does not require people to travel. And since at this time of
economic crisis, training and re-training of employees is critical, he has got
orders (some are pilots, though) from some very well know companies. This
company is also working on a quick to install, low-cost, VoIP-based telecom
solutions for SMBs that spend significant money on phone bills, which he claims
will bring bills down by over 50%, and it will all be legal.

I asked him why would the users not go to established players. His answer:
Big names charge a lot of money and give you lots of features, while you may
actually need very few things which can come for peanuts. Obviously and working
with very small players has its own risks, but these options should not be ruled
out. I am sure that this global crisis will give rise to lots of such solutions,
and they could come from big players or small.

One accusation made against corporates is that they are greedy. I am sure if
CIOs and users are forced to think out of the box, they will be able to save a
lot of money. And the route to higher profits will be productivity and
efficiency rather than revenue. Wastes of any kind, including IT, will be
drastically reduced.

For several years Mom had abandoned us. Great to have her back.