NSC Summit: IBRS looks at how to manage IT in an economic downturn

He suggested some of the things companies can do now to survive the economic downturn are to carry out a telco audit, carry out a virtualisation program and look into office utilities ie Google Apps and doing audits of licenses of who is doing what and who is using them.

MacKinnon said that now is a fantastic time to launch into the acquisition of hardware and software and strike some good deals.

He believes IT governance is misunderstood in a lot of organisations, adding 'when is the last time you killed a project off? If the answer is never then that is a sign of poor IT governance.'

MacKinnon said the three don'ts of what not to do in a recession are;

Don't begin slashing and burning until two things are clear - the true organisational state and have an understanding of the IT cost base

Don't sacrifice the short term for the long term ie think about the long term first

Don't manage IT the way you did in 2008 and earlier.

'This is a new era for IT management. When it comes to recessions there are negatives and positives," he said.

"We can turn lessons learnt from past recessions into an opportunity for great growth, ie when people have applied innovative techniques in an economic downturn. In a recession innovation is not dead.

"In times of adversity people pull together which they might not have done before. The same applies in organisations to change the way things are conducted. Recessions don't last forever. People can come out of them much stronger," added MacKinnon.

He said there were three questions you need to ask your CFO;

In adverse economic cycles which works best? such as product and service innovation, business modelling

Where is your organisation really at?

Which type of innovation provides best results?

"IT centralisation should be high on the agenda," said MacKinnon.  

"In 2009 we need to have precision managers who are on top of the numbers and managing it a different way.

"Build and strengthen capabilities; in a recession people have a lot of permanent staff it's a fantastic time to really invest in those people and make them feel like they are valued.

"Get them involved in training and managing things that they didn't do before."

MacKinnon said companies need to look at process re-invention - running projects until enough benefits are delivered then killing it dead rather than letting a project 'lumber' on.

He recommended looking at cloud computing making reference to the company salesforce.com which he said has been in existence for 10 years.

He also told guests to look into what GE has done in the US in September last year working with Zoho to equip 400 desktops with a cloud computing application.

He spoke of the value of desktop power management citing a client of his that had got a new desktop image with Vista because it was attractive for its portability and inbuilt desktop manageabilites.

"Those who don't have power management on their desktop can spend a lot on computer usage," he added.