As a child, one spends long hours asking when. “When are we going?…When will we get there?…When’s dinner?…When will it stop raining?” I find myself feeling the same way about the economy. When are we going to start seeing things get better? Are things getting worse or better? It would take a true psychic or guy with a really lucky coin to tell for sure.
Returning to business as usual requires a plan
Economic forecasters sound a lot like weathermen. They are all busy predicting, telling us to secure the hatches and brace ourselves for the big one. But as someone always looking for the rainbow during the rainstorm I’m happy to say I recently came upon an article that talked about another kind of planning, a kind of planning that involved what we were going to do when the sun starts shining again.
The article in InformationWeek focused on the need to prepare for (future) economic recovery now. Just as it took a while for companies to recognize the lag, it will be sometime before a “resume normal practices” is announced. In the meantime Gartner, a market research firm, suggests preparing a return to business plan by July 1 and revisiting it on a monthly basis to make alterations to it as the economic climate continues to change.
“As these improvements translate into new IT project demands to help businesses identify new revenue and profit opportunities, companies will need a way to manage the already high project load with a new wave of projects. However, waiting until that new demand arrives will be far too late to appropriately meet it, and we are recommending that companies start preparing for business growth now with a view to having these plans completed by July 1, 2009.” – Ken McGee, vice president and Gartner fellow
Gartner suggests July 1 as a deadline of sorts for organizations because modest business growth could take place during 2010 and many companies and organizations are planning their budgets and IT projects now for the upcoming year. To wait until 2010 to add such projects to the budget may be too late.
“We’re not trying to predict when the end of the recession will take place, nor are we trying to speculate when credit market stability will occur, or when we will see consistent investment appreciation return to the world’s equity markets. What we are saying is that due to the lag in time between the point at which the economy begins to grow again, and when it’s officially declared to be growing again, companies simply can’t wait for an ‘official’ declaration before they begin planning for better times.” – Mark Raskino, vice president and Gartner fellow
So just as it is necessary to prepare for a rainy day, it’s doubly essential to make plans for what you’ll do when the rain finally stops. And it’s a lot more fun.
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