- Focus on solving your customers needs - independent of the industry.
- Do not scale back on innovation. All markets typically are different when they come out of a recession that what they were before one. It is only those who focus on innovation shall come out as winners.
- Focus on your core business - differ the adjacent market until the market recovers (unless it is related to the innovation)
- Do not focus on developing new infrastructure (unless absolutely needed). Build out the infrastructure incrementally as new products and offerings are either upgraded and rolled out to customers.
- Do invest heavily on large packaged applications. As the entire market is going through a shift - it may not be wise to invest in large packaged applications. It will consume a lot of resources (and $$$) without any major differentiation. It may be easier to subscribe for the same applications from a SaaS provider.
- Do invest in a few strategic initiatives
- Do not attempt to crawl before you run - "run baby run". The company that runs the fastest to meet the customers demand WILL WIN.
Just some of my final thoughts to close out 2008 and as usual please do feel free to drop me line with your comments and/or feedback.
Wishing everyone a very happy and prosperous new year.
Yogish
1 comment:
You have really good points here. With today's economy, businesses should be wiser in applying and maximizing IT. However, it doesn't necessarily mean that they should cut spending.
You're also correct in saying that businesses should focus on their customers' needs. I learned this from my sister, who can surely attest to this. Once she put up an IT support system, her clients became more loyal and gave positive feedback more often. So I do agree that customer service should be prioritized, whether you have a corporation or a small business. CRM should also be considered, don't you think? There's no use expanding your pool of clients if you don't take care of your relationship with them.
Given today's economy, business owners should know more on how to cope up. Thanks for this very informative post. Keep it up!
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