Recent Survey Reveals Leading Cost Reduction Measures In U.S. Companies
josh hunter
- January 29 2009
- 567 views
- 7 comments
A recent survey conducted by Chicago’s Challenger, Gray & Christmas sheds some insight on what companies in the United States are doing to cut expenses due to the current economic crisis. According to the survey, the number one way companies are reducing costs is through cutting travel expenses (66.7%), followed by hiring freeze/ reduction (57.8%), and—sadly— coming in third is permanent layoffs (55.6%).
Here are the full results:
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January 29th, 2009 at 3:25 pm
I like it!!
MR,
January 29th, 2009 at 4:31 pm
Damn , da ding dong damn ! They had to do survey to figure that out . it’s Genius !
January 29th, 2009 at 6:17 pm
Based on the #’s, 26% REDUCED year end bonuses while 22% ELIMINATED year end bonuses. That means upwards of 52% of companies are still giving year end bonuses, I assume. My total year end bonuses could be summed up in 1 car payment over 20 years. Customer Holiday Party? WTF? We wonder how we got here in the first place….
January 30th, 2009 at 1:34 pm
The one thing this survey did not address is outsourcing certain functions within the organization so that they can focus on their core businesses. One example would be to outsource their IT needs to reduce costs (e.g. Help Desk Services, Remote Monitoring and management, Backup & Disaster Recovery, System Administration, On-site Support, Infrastructure Management, etc.), just like they would do for payroll or other services, especially during this economic recession. This not only reduces costs but frees up time allowing the business to pursue other more pending projects, not necessarily displacing employees.
One of the real benefits to the outsourcing of IT is it allows you to work with a provider that has a much broader breadth of knowledge they gain from working many different sites, systems, and applications. Having a single on-site engineer usually limits the business to only having the options that are in the comfort zone of the employee. Server consolidation is another area that we have seen providing significant savings. By consolidating servers we have been able to reduce the number of physical servers reducing the management requirements and other things like floor space, power consumption, and building environmental needs such as air conditioning. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions at (760)827-5100×109 or . Thank you, Tom Church
January 30th, 2009 at 2:03 pm
Tom,
Interesting and I agree outsourcing is a way to focus on core compentenies and save costs in certain areas of business. Do you see a trend in cloud computing or see this becoming more popular in the future. It seems a company like Google could utilize their server farms and expertise to exploit their economies of scale and offer server services through online data management and storage?
Read an article recently that caught my attention on this trend?
Thanks for the insight,
MR
therookery.ning.com
January 30th, 2009 at 3:51 pm
MR,
Thank you for your response and inquiry. Cloud computing and online data management & storage is the current trend, but they do not necessarily address real-time help desk needs, remote monitoring, hardware maintenance, on-site support, and so forth. By outsourcing these functions a company can save up to 50% in IT costs. Furthermore, cloud computing and SaaS (Software as a Service) may replace the hardware infrastructure but the business would still need managed services such as user assistance. We offer 7×24x365 support with a 4 hour on-site response and are able to resolve issues on average in 8~12 mins. with a 95% resolution the first time.
Tom Church / Abtech Solutions
(760) 827-5100 x 109
abtechsolutions.com
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January 31st, 2009 at 10:08 am
Tom, Pretty amazing statistics you offer, there. Great for a larger corporation.
How do you plan to assist the one door, brick and mortar store (with online presence and a shopping cart) for instance?
Also, most Action Sports manufactures are not that tech savvy anyway. Take your location, for example: In Carlsbad, you have Spy Optic, Dragon and Adio. These are small companies with 100 employees each or less and maybe 2 IT staff, at most. Many times any IT issue will be hardware faulty and not a software or operations malfunction. Therefore, an on site tech is needed.
Thanks, Mark