While cost-cutting is the most obvious strategy in a recession, history shows that it’s the companies that do it with a scalpel, not with an axe, that prosper. To avoid jeopardising growth, you need to ensure that the savings you make are about improving efficiency and delivering greater value throughout 2009 and beyond. Although you’ll no doubt be under unprecedented pressure to reduce costs, remember that a wise cut is an uneven cut: avoid knee-jerk, across-the-board reductions. Equally importantly, be prepared to invest if there’s a strong business case, or to manage the increased risk that uncertain times bring.

What CSC is doing

One example of how we’re using our own offerings to improve efficiency is our standardised managed print service. We’ve cut our annual print costs by 40%, lowered the cost of consumables and inventory, reduced paper requirements by one third, made print costs more transparent, cut support calls through improved equipment uptime and standardisation, and provided better service to our employees.

Minimise upfront and fixed costs

A utility or pay-as-you-go service model not only gets assets off your balance sheet, it lets you align your costs with fluctuating business needs.

CSC Dynamic Server gives you access to fully configured computing resources on demand in your data centre or ours. We can deliver a fully configured virtual operating environment, with software, ready to use, in just 30 minutes. Typically organisations see a 30% reduction in total cost of ownership (TCO) and a 90% reduction in the procurement and provisioning lifecycle.

Unlock IT efficiencies

A recent survey showed 95% of Business Process Management projects exceed corporate ROI  and yield results in around 6 months. BPM provides improved visibility into key business metrics, reduce costs through automating processes, and improving productivity by allocating resources more efficiently.

When AMP was concerned about the cost of communications for 300 agents in two different locations, 1,000 kms apart, CSC worked with them to design, deliver and manage a turnkey VoIP contact centre solution.

Avoid unnecessary costs

It’s time to reconsider costs that can be avoided by achieving the same end by different means. Open source solutions can avoid licensing costs; effective performance management can avoid staff replacement costs; videoconferencing can reduce travel costs. And, within the IT department, travel costs can also be avoided by implementing solutions that enable remote management, such as CSC Dynamic Desktop and our Remote Infrastructure Management services.

Allianz is now Australia’s fourth largest insurance company and a strategically important subsidiary of its European parent. One of its areas of cost advantage is in mainframe software, due to CSC running all of its client software at the same version level in a well managed environment.