The Telegraph Business Club 

Three steps to gaining better value from IT systems expanded in the boom years could ensure survival, says Glyn Heath, CEO of IT services company Centiq.

Despite research predicting a three per cent contraction in the UK economy in 2009¹ and business failures up 59 per cent on last year,² the survival of UK businesses lies in their own hands. According to Centiq, an IT services provider focused on the data centre, this is particularly the case if they take practical measures to drive far greater productivity from their existing IT systems.

Organisations that take practical action to discover their IT infrastructure’s hidden capabilities will markedly improve the performance of their business systems and transform their cost efficiencies, without embarking on new capital expenditure.

Many business managers are trying to find ways to reduce their cost of service or boost return on capital employed but many still don’t know what is ‘under the bonnet’ of their IT system, even though getting better value from it is now a top priority. 

With credit tighter and staff costs frozen, one of the less widely publicised options is for business managers to work more closely with their IT manager to review their critical business systems’ performance against their revised business targets. This joint approach enables companies to plot the performance gains they need in the tough economic climate and then make informed adjustments to their existing IT infrastructure, many at a low level, to help deliver on targets.

There are three practical steps that boards and their IT departments should be taking now to harness their business and IT systems’ potential towards survival:

Action 1: Check the health of IT: Using proven monitoring frameworks, companies should carry out ‘health checks’ to measure, monitor and optimise their IT infrastructures, driving down operational costs and making business systems more adaptable to new priorities.

Action 2: Consolidate resources: Virtualise storage pools and organise critical data sets into high availability, non-critical and archive levels to clear and optimise storage space and make company databases leaner and far more responsive to customers. Additionally, consolidate and virtualise applications spread across multiple platforms onto central servers, to improve asset utilisation, reduce power and cooling costs, IT maintenance costs and time and free up resources for front line services.  

Action 3:  Out-task and outsource to focus on priorities: Review and out-task time-consuming and non-core processes, so the business can focus on customer-facing activity and strengthen its ability to innovate.

Measurement and management bring immediate and long term advantages. Businesses that fully understand their IT system’s transactional abilities will achieve rapid efficiencies and greater service flexibility without having to sanction further IT investments. In today’s climate, improved system flexibility and streamlined data centre operations could be the difference between business survival and failure. 

Thinking ahead, measuring and optimising IT systems also provides board executives with a ‘road map’ to support clear decision-making, essential efficiency drives, staff training and gearing up for growth when confidence returns.

The figures in this article are drawn from:

¹ PricewaterhouseCoopers “Dealing with debt” – talking point report, March 2009.

² BDO Stoy Hayward, Industry Watch, March 2009.