I used to think that people who talked about “spending money to save money” were just joking about justifying their latest shopping spree on items acquired as part of an impulse buy. But as I have traveled around the world visiting our customers, it’s become very clear that the higher up in the organization a person sits, the more attention is paid to how money is being spent to gain a pay-back. C-level executives want to know how the money is being spent from their budgets to gain return-on-investment (ROI) and to maximize and prioritize their IT/Security budgets. Executives are not afraid to spend money now to save money in the long run. In fact, if there is going to be a strong or high payback, they want to spend the money as fast as possible to realize the economic returns ASAP.
I’ve noticed that during difficult economic times, too often the lower- level positions in an organization translate corporate belt tightening initiatives from the top as times of “no spending” or “no budget.” This is often an incorrect interpretation and it can be misleading. The directive from above may instead be about asking the organization to review how existing budget money is being spent today compared to other ways it may be allocated to gain a greater ROI. It’s not the time to stop spending, it’s the time to reassess where and how the money is being spent!
At Sendmail, we’ve witnessed larger sales transactions during these times because it appears the customer’s organization is on “high alert” on all levels to look for ways to save money over time. Often there is a direct link between the long term strategic business objectives of an organization and the savings resulting from a 3-year lower total-cost-of-ownership from major infrastructure investments made today. For example, if a messaging infrastructure can be modernized by moving from software maintained on multiple layers of aging hardware servers to “virtual” appliances based upon VMWare, not only may machine processing layers be reduced, but the entire upgraded architecture would pay for itself from the dramatic reduction of maintenance/support costs of software, hardware, and administrative overhead. Instead of saying “there is no money available,” the organization should be aware they may be already incurring the software, hardware, and administrative costs in its support budget. The existing budget could be simply reallocated to cover the upfront costs of modernizing the messaging infrastructure today, moving from outdated hardware to high performance appliances which increase productivity immediately. By doing so, the department could gain alignment with the long term strategic business plan calling for greater security or compliance flexibility, while paying for itself through savings over the three-year period.
I’ve yet to find a large enterprise where substantial savings like this could not be found after Sendmail is able to conduct a messaging assessment and architectural review at the customer site by one of our email security architects. The bottom line is a customer can spend money to save money, and the money can usually be easily found by looking closely at existing budgets! Messaging volumes will continue to rise exponentially in the future. Infrastructures will be stretched and stressed if not refreshed with the latest technology advances. Modernization not only makes good business sense, there is also a high payback on something all customers cannot live without. I am interested to learn more from others on how such infrastructure investments yield these savings.