Lowering TCO of Enterprise IT Systems during COVID-19

As an eternal optimist, I've always wanted to live through an economic recession as a working professional and finally, the time might be here.

Because you know... what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, faster, better, and smarter.

Anyway... looks like the operationally inefficient... the ones breaking the economic principles and then the unfortunate ones (see image below) will either have to suffer in the form of cutting their workforce or get a bailout.

But the innovative ones... the ones whom Naseem Talib refers to as the 'Antifragile' in his investigation of opacity, luck, uncertainty, probability, human error, risk, and decision-making in a world we don't under... those companies will not just survive but thrive.

Action Plan

Now if you're a business leader (talking to all you CXOs out there)... first make sure your people feel psychologically & financially safe and taken care of amidst this storm. Perfect opportunity to practice radical transparency here.

And once you've taken care of your people, below are 3 ideas from an industry insider related to your Enterprise IT Systems related costs that you may have not accounted for in your Business Continuity Plan.

3 strategies you can execute on to lower the TCO of your Enterprise IT Systems during COVID-191. Do the opposite

Your competitors are focused on cutting their costs by laying off the labor workforce (touched more on this on point #3) and paused all new IT-related purchases and froze hiring.

If I was a CIO right now, I would go on a shopping spree by leveraging the pre-approved 2020 IT spending budget for Enterprise SaaS solutions that help your Org become more operationally efficient because:

a) SME SaaS vendors may be hurting right now with the Board making it mandatory to have a realistic path to profitability. This leaves you with more room for negotiation and get multi-year contracts at a huge discounted rate.

b) Bet on companies who have been around for 10+ years and lived the past couple of economic downturns instead of a bullish startup running on jet fuel.

2. Audit Your Legacy IT-Systems & Redefine the Status Quo

Over the last 3 years, I'm grateful to have met and get to learn from over 68 technical stakeholders from Fortune 1K companies. I'm amazed by all the legacy systems that's still running the American Economy.

IBM 3270 is still powering the DMVs across the country (shaking my head).

Anyway... this is a wonderful opportunity to not just jump on the trend of picking up a tech stack that's more popular from a marketing perspective but evaluate which ones help you to actually lower your TCO.

For example, in the world of web app development - what's the point in having a web, a desktop, an iOS and an Android version of websites/applications for each department and LOB when web components have already crossed the chasm?

Progressive Web Applications are here and you can be framework agnostic and write your application once and run it across all your required platforms.

If you're mainly Java on the backend, for your back- and middle-office applications Vaadin lets you leverage your existing investment in Java to build modern, responsive front-ends i.e. you can get the same output with 1/3th fewer developers.

All technologies are not created equal and each has its own place in the ecosystem.

What if the status quo shifted from:

"Let's go with Angular/React because it's easy to find developers with that expertise."

To:

"Let's dissect our common use-cases and see how the stack aligns with the end business outcomes."

In the world of front-end development, maybe there's a framework that your Java developers are already using (that has been around for 20 years :) to build modern web UIs for your business applications because they were frustrated with how slow things moved to get stuff handed over from the JS folks.

Now it's even more important to not choose a stack-based on how good the SEO for the keyword is but lead the stack selection with the end business outcome in mind while accounting for confirmation biases.

3. Continue upskilling your talent

The talent/skills gap is real. You already knew it.

Gartner Survey Shows Global Talent Shortage Is Now the Top Emerging Risk Facing Organizations

So instead of letting folks go, what if you put a mandatory furlough in place instead?

Chances are your people will get bored just babysitting all day or binge-watching Netflix and they'll want to continue to work even if the paycheck's not coming.

But then, once the dust settles down, you can start the financial disbursement and maybe payback the work they did during the furlough.

If your folks have access to Pluralsight, then they will come back to work having leveled up already.

On Making Objective Decisions versus Making Decisions Based on Fear during COVID-19 market panic:

Most of our behaviors are driven to either:

a) run away from pain, or

b) seek pleasure.

The stock market has fallen, countries are on lockdown, key conferences canceled, and millions of children are not in school.

Toilet paper shelves are empty. Hand sanitizer bottles are going for 10X its retail price.

So how can you avoid making decisions based on fear? Or worse, perpetually living in a state of fear?

By choosing to stand guard at the door of our mind and not unconsciously letting the media and the cultural landscape of fear and anxiety draw on our focus.

This doesn't mean living in a bubble or ignoring the reality in which we live today – it simply means making conscious decisions about what we are willing to give our time, energy and effort to.


True builders are always building and when resources are scarce, they become resourceful. 

I wish the same for you and your team. 

Above are the shower thoughts from this morning and figured it applied to the all of us in the business community.

If you found this insightful, please click that 'Share' Button.

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The next articles on the To-Publish List:

— How to Negotiate with your Enterprise SaaS solution vendor during an economic downtime

—How to Go About Job Hunting If You Got Laid Off due to COVID-19

PS: This article was first published on LinkedIn. Come say 'hello'.

PPS: After Wall Street tanked to its worst day since 1987, I went shopping on Wall Street.

I'm a DCA kinda investor but when my favorite SaaS companies are trading at huge discounts, figured this might be the chance to jump in. And that's what I did.

Portfolio is back up 30% since the dip. I'll continue to buy the dips while keeping the DCA going on. Should I open-source by portfolio, hmu and I might do that as well :)

Since you're still reading this, what if you did the opposite?

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References:

- https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/3/24/21191075/coronavirus-recession-worker-layoffs-unemployment-economy-restaurants-stimulus-bill

- https://economicprinciples.org/

- https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2019-01-17-gartner-survey-shows-global-talent-shortage-is-now-the-top-emerging-risk-facing-organizations

- https://www.amazon.com/Antifragile-Things-That-Disorder-Incerto/dp/0812979680