During the second presidential debate the other evening, a question was raised "What should Americans be prepared to do during this economic crisis?" and the question contrasted to the times of the Great Depression. I gave the question some thought. My short answer is above.Make do with what you have. During the early 1980s, it cost $1 million for one brand new GE locomotive and when the railroads' aging fleet needed new locomotives to keep the trains running and on time (timelier) every bit of savings we could find contributed to this effort. I've also known an awful lot of SMBs over the years with unrealistic pipe dreams that end up in smoke. Over buying, wrong sizing and buying for the wrong reasons aren't limited to SMBs either. Someone, somewhere along the food chain is going to ask, "Are we using what we have to the best possible extent?"
If you can't sell lemons then sell lemonade. During the great recession of 1990, which started in the late 1980s with bank failures in Texas we bought used gear from the FDIC for pennies on the dollar and resold these systems as parts and to companies needing a telephony system. We taught our high school kid workers how to clean business telephones and reassemble them, a process that takes a couple of hours per phone. We made money, stayed afloat and just so you know - we paid these kids $8.50 an hour back then and were still profitable.
Don't spend what you don't have. Good grief, all the lessons in life and this one comes from my parents, grandparents and great grandparents with the admonishment of "beware the bankers!" They all lived through the Great Depression. Bailing out mortgages, corporations and seeing the erosion of Americans' personal net worth weren't financial lessons I was taught growing up. I've heard more whining from politicians that businesses can't get loans to fund payroll. Timeout. Businesses don't practice cash management and don't have cash reserves? Now comes the dinosaur in me. No loans (personal) are acceptable unless they are sensible debt: vehicle and mortgage. Everything else is KAPU (keep out - off limits). I don't think much of (business) borrowing either because that's often where all senses are lost.
Find out what you have, then streamline it. Do you really have inventory of all your gear, circuits and services? (software, licenses, maintenance contracts) How accurate is your inventory? Conduct a physical inventory and you will find numerous mistakes and oversights that can cost your company plenty. The same is true with circuit, wireless and telephone company billing. Unless you conduct a physical inventory including verification at the demarcations, then you are never 100 percent on your inventory. Oh- for those who depend upon their elaborate billing systems - don't. Most bills are wrong and the bigger the bill the more room for mistakes. I can remember pulling out customer bills with PBXs being billed to locations that were torn down years earlier. The same is true with circuits of all types. Unless you master the bills they will in turn master your company's checkbook.
Spend what you have on what you need. Meaning, good companies will always have a cash reserve and be able to take advantage of down economies. Get the financial pulse of your organization and stay within those confines for your spending. Spend what you have and can afford to - on only what you need that brings you a measurable return. IPT price cuts are now being tossed around and across the board. There will be many more price cuts by the end of the year in hopes of stirring the pot. Then, when competitors are choking we often find opportunities to buy their surplus inventory for pennies on the dollar. Every company we purchased was during a recession or economic crisis. Having cash reserves means saving. What this translates to you as end user-customers is lower prices on aging inventory. But I hear from the masses that this thinking (saving-spending) isn't the norm. Bailouts and the associated unknown repercussions are often un-traveled paths arising from misleading and or bad information that go along with the politicians and the greed that overcomes those in lofty corporate occupations.
