Can you use the downturn to your advantage?
In the current market conditions the easy and obvious thing to do when turning to cost cutting is to wield the knife heavily on IT. New projects get culled, recruitment freezes and contractors get laid off as IT spend shrinks. This is a knee-jerk reaction and rarely in the long term interests of the oganisation. Surely the current market downturn should be seen as an opportunity to invest in IT, use the slack period to improve processes when they are not stressed, and get ready for the upswing when the economy turns.
I saw this quote on a similar topic so i made it into a bumper sticker!
Interesting question. The people suffering the most in this downturn are those who hung to the coattails of their strategy even when the evidence suggested they should be looking elsewhere. What makes you think that they will abandon this strategy now ? They have always made the easy decisions and are still making the same easy decisions all over again i.e. cost cutting in IT.