^[1] The tightening credit crisis continues to impact IT budgets and 2009 planning assumptions.  Ongoing conversations with clients confirm that most enterprises anticipate some retrenchment of budgets.  As business and IT teams seek to reduce the cost of existing systems, several key enterprise packaged app strategies rise in importance:

• Software contract reviews – leading clients invest time in reviewing existing contracts for new opportunities to reduce costs, anticipate business model flexibility, and contain overall vendor lock-in.
• Vendor rationalization without lock-in risk – now may be the right time to identify vendors core to the overall business strategy and build stronger long term partnerships.  On the other hand, vendors who have tried to raise prices or failed to deliver as a technology partner should be weaned off approve vendor lists, especially if you risk vendor lock in.
• Shared services deployment – enterprises with multiple divisions and business units are looking at shared services to drive further efficiency by eliminating duplicate software, infrastructure, and staffing.
• Project portfolio analysis – clients are looking to “stop feeding the beast” and reduce the overall spend for legacy systems while freeing up the remaining budget for new innovation.  Leading clients deploy application scoring and ranking methodologies.

The bottom line.

As you begin the planning of your recession proof packaged apps strategy, leverage a long term apps strategy frameworks ^[2] to assess people management and organizational alignment, business process definition and optimization planning, technology strategy planning, and solution centric ecosystem maturity.  Keep in context the 4 major business drivers ^[3] from efficiency, regulatory compliance, growth, and strategy.

Your POV.

Got a strategy, lessons learned, or success story to share?  Post here or send a private email to rwang0@gmail.com.  If I use it, I’ll send you a copy of one of our Long Term Packaged Apps Strategy ^[4] reports.  Look forward to hearing your thoughts!

Copyright © 2008 R Wang. All rights reserved.