Every night the curtain rises on Broadway’s Monty Python’s Spamalot– and the actors sing “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life”. It must be an effort at times, but this approach can yield its own dividends and, if nothing else, it does make the day at the office look much more positive.

Investment gurus tell us that this is the time to invest, to pick up stocks at good prices, to get in on the ground floor and to lower the average cost of purchase within a portfolio. Here at Net@Work we know that the subjects we should talk to clients about are in the area of efficiency – making less do more, making the IT dollar stretch a little further and perhaps catching up on a few projects for which there was no time a year ago.

A few particular points to focus on right now – perhaps ideas for the New Year Resolution list –

ROI – the essential justification for a project – there is little point in discussing the cost of an IT investment without recognizing its potential to bring savings or additional business. We see projects in areas such as document management, financial reporting, web/internet, compliance and profitability tracking where the total cost of the project can be recouped in less than 12 months. Wow, that compares favorably with 2% or 3% on bank savings accounts these days!

Responsible maintenance and support for existing systems – if systems were to go down in the days of easy money, it might be bad; much worse however to have an emergency in tight times. There is a lot of concern about security of data, reliability of backups and tracking of up-time within networks. Clients often solve these problems with a managed services contract to provide pro-active management of infrastructure. After all, you don’t just wait till the car stops on the highway before servicing it. You need reliability and costs within budgets.

Know your numbers – Walmart is doing well this quarter: the economy is tight and they are taking advantage of it. They KNOW they are doing well from daily sales reports, daily profits, tracking of popularity of products and keeping inventories down. Tools to do this are readily available but most clients don’t use the ones they have and are only vaguely aware of others available. Give your Net@Work account manager a call so we can work through an ROI calculation on Real Time Data for your company.

Make the internet work for you – in terms of “bang for the buck”, nothing comes close to the internet for economy in data transfer or in getting information in front of your clients. We have a new verb:” to google” – and we may be close to having eBay and Amazon as verbs too. Your web site, with up to date information or interactive customer data is a 24/7 presence for you right inside your customers’ offices and homes. What’s that worth? Lets get together to work out some ROI on this too.

Give us a call – “Lets look on the bright side” – together!

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