IT and corporate cretinism

Leading Russian IT consultant Sergey Karelov shares his thoughts on the crisis in the IT industry:

Throughout his life, a person consumes only 3-5 grams of iodine (about a teaspoon), and the daily need for iodine is a very microscopic dose of 100-200 micrograms. However, if you deprive a person of these microscopic doses, he will begin with a certainty of declining intellectual abilities. And if iodine deficiency is not eliminated, the person is threatened with dementia.

With IT is almost the same. In developed countries, IT budgets of enterprises average only 2-3% of revenues, while in Russia this figure is even less than 1%. However, if you try to save on these small expenses without updating, for example, the IT infrastructure or refusing to use enterprise resource management applications, the consequences for the enterprise will be almost the same as for iodine deficiency in humans .

The quality and speed of management decisions taken at the company will immediately begin to decline, the overall control over the business will decrease, and the flow of information will be disrupted. If the savings on the IT-budget of the enterprise drags on for a long time, it will end in complete cretinism: management mistakes and lack of competitiveness will lead the company to collapse.
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Arguments about ways to reduce corporate costs in Russia today are very relevant in connection with the growing crisis. Since no one today is able to predict the scale of the consequences of the crisis developing in Russia, the majority of Russian leaders decide, just in case, to cut all those expenses that can be reduced by 30 percent. Naturally, IT budgets fall under this hot hand. And no one cares that reducing the IT budget by 30% is likely to save less than 1% of the company's income, while a similar percentage of savings from the wage bill could save tens of times more. But cuts in the wage fund by 30% are a scandal, and cutting the IT budget by 30% is a sacred matter (these IT people, and so they say, snicked).

And the manager is ready to sign a reduction in the IT budget. But then he needs to stop and remember the consequences of iodine deficiency. And think - is it worth the meager savings on IT risk of falling into corporate cretinism?

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