Dennis Howlett quotes Sun Microsystems' Tim Bray on surviving the tough economic times.
John Doerr lists ten points for companies to stay afloat on Venture Beat.
Being frugal has become hip, there's no doubt about that.
Both people quoted above suggest cutting software spending and large capex IT investments. We wanted to add our top software and IT cutting strategies.... And then say something about cutting expenses on business intelligence, dashboards and reporting. Business Intelligence projects can be obscenely expensive, long to implement and difficult to maintain. Isn't it time the times
(that are definitely changing) also affect this end of the enterprise software industry?
Our top suggestions:
- Use free email.
- Use open source bug tracking systems.
- Use automated QA.
- Use software to manage customer support.
- Do not use database systems that are too weak for your needs a year from now.
- Use free anti-virus and firewall software.
- Outsource as much as you can (check out ODesk).
- Use Prism business intelligence.
Why Prism? First of all, it makes our business intelligence project a non-capex project, since payment is by month (and at tens of dollars per user month, there is no argument it is inexpensive). More importantly, there is no up front investment to get the project running, making the TCO almost zero. There's no training and certification either - we've designed the software so that anyone can figure out how to use it and anyone can connect to the data sources we support. And perhaps good number crunching, analytics, poring over numbers will get you an advantage in these times. Doerr said in the post mentioned above "For your revenue plan, develop and obsess on leading indicators - e.g. bookings, unique visitors, conversions".
And good luck - sometimes trying times do make us better, much better. Frugality isn't just about money - it is also about recognizing your core strengths and focusing just on them.