Brennan: Heads down and tails up during recession

In an interview with CRN, Dave Stevens, managing director at Brennan, said it has been focusing on winning new clients.

"It's difficult stuff at the moment, we've been focused on the basics for clients," he said.

"We are also working a lot harder during the proposal process with new clients.

"Even with a spending freeze on IT products, with some of our customers, there's a lot for maintenance work out there for us."

Stevens said the Federal Government's plan to give SMBs with $2 million a 50 percent rebate and any organisation with over $2 million a 30 percent rebate, on IT investments will come in handy for Brennan's customers.

"The incentive will allow medium organisations the ability to commit to IT products without having to fork over the money beforehand," he said.

"We've informed our customers of the tax scheme and we've done a lot of work getting the message across.

He said the beauty of the scheme is businesses enter an agreement to invest in IT products.

"They don't even have to agree on a price, just have a general scope of work that needs to be done," said Stevens.

"Then it has to be finalised, installed and paid before 30 June 2010.

"It's a really good opportunity because it pulls projects forward, with clients spending now and more in the future."

Stevens said it was a "good scheme" and would "properly motivate" businesses to invest in their IT infrastructure.

However, the scheme won't come in handy for some markets that were proving to be unstable.

"Sectors like finance are stressed," said Stevens.

"There are businesses that aren't doing very well and there are complaints about cash flow, which makes it hard for people with IT products."