"Yes, we can help you cut costs quickly and deeply. How far
would you like to go and how fast would you like to do it?" That,
says Gartner analyst Mark Raskino is
what CIOs should reply when their business colleagues come to them
for advice over the next 12 months.
Raskino said CIOs are in a difficult position. "They can't plan
because their CEOs don't know what to plan for," he said. "Change
is happening faster than people can think. All previous assumptions
have been thrown out, and we may have to rebuild the foundations of
the economy from scratch."
Raskino said the watchword for CEOs for the forseeable future
was 'restructure'. "But no-one knows what for," he said. The future
was fogged by uncertainty, volatility and raw fear, he said.
Despite this, CIOs could do much to prepare for a more volatile
environment by being agile and responsive to the business's
demands, he said. "IT is not the problem it was in 2001 with the
dotcom crash. "Since then we've run lean shops and we've taken
a lot of cost out. But now we need to anticipate what's going to
happen."
He said CIOs should expect their companies to lay off staff.
They might have to include their own staff in that to show they
were sharing the pain, but it was important to make sure that those
who left did not leave behind
logic bombs and that passwords and permissions were properly
revoked.
Access to cash and capital would be crucial, and those with
money would impose new conditions that would have to be
incorporated in IT systems, he said.
Mergers and acquisitions could rise as the weaker companies were
bought up. These would have to be brought into the company
smoothly, he said.
Raskino expected some industries to restructure entirely. "The
phrase 'too big to fail' is going to gain currency," he said. "But
what will that mean (for our idea of capitalism and the market
economy) when some companies are semi-nationalised or have
shareholders with planning horizons longer than three years? CIOs
will have to adapt to these views as they emerge," he said.
He said companies' old IT plans had become irrelevant in the
face of the fundamental changes facing society. "From now on it's
about zero-based budgeting and rebuilding on the assumption that
there will be new business models," he said. "Expect sudden, peaky
demands from the CEO."
This was an opportunity to ditch some legacy systems for
experimenting modern ways of doing things, such as
SOA and
cloud computing, he said. It could also clear the decks of
"zombie projects", those whose sponsors had shrunk back into the
undergrowth.
"CIOs can now ask for and get permission to clean up the project
portfolio," he said. This was their chance to sort out deep-seated
cost centres they'd been dying to get rid of but couldn't because
they didn't have the political clout, he said.
Raskino said bosses would be looking for managers with clear
ideas. "Crisp, clear answers are needed now. The world is turning
black and white, not grey," he said.
But he added that it would be increasingly important to manage
the messages that the changes sent out about the company. "The
demand for PR is going to grow," he said.