LONG-TERM VIEW

Vendors have all kinds of creative schemes designed to get people to make purchases that they otherwise wouldn't. In both business and consumer space, (too) easy credit, pay-as-you-go plans, and schemes that get you started in low payments that stretch out over long periods of time or whose premiums increase over time are commonplace.

The end result is that people end up paying significantly more for exactly the same thing over the life of a project.

That's valuable working capital that's being wasted on interest payments. The same principle that applies to cash applies in the case of technology purchases. Buying what "everyone else is" when there's just no foreseeable need for it or when something else -- perhaps something that's already paid for -- will do the job doesn't make any sense.

Rather than encouraging the sort of shortsightedness that we see in the industry, we recognize that even the largest of our clients have a finite amount of money for any given project. Even a multimillion dollar project deemed "mission critical" can't have its costs spiral out of control; sooner or later, a project like that is going to get canned or corners are going to start getting cut to try to get something working, to try to save some of the investment that's been made.

We can't predict the future, of course, but looking at your long-term business plans and objectives and taking a look at where you've been and what you have now can go a long way to making your investment in technology more justifiable. Being in tune with the leading edge of technology, we're in a much better position to be able to comment on what is and isn't likely to be a part of the technology landscape over the duration of your business plan.

This kind of understanding of your business objectives and the nature of the technology in question can make us a valuable ally in crafting and executing the technology plan that can honestly point to the three words that CEOs love to hear: "Return On Investment".