Innovate or your application will die a slow death. Harsh words, but you’ll start seeing more and more CIOs, CTOs, and even CEOs demanding more and more from their existing systems and business applications.

Most companies rely on their business software and systems more than they rely on their employees. As companies start cutting back on costs, they will look at the IT department, and see 80% of their IT budget applied to maintenance of existing systems, with the remaining 20% on new innovations or R&D.

This is the 80/20 rule or paradigm. While this is valid, it is also a trap that many IT departments fall into. When times get tough, they start focusing more of their budgets into the maintenance role and forsake innovation. While this works well for the short term, many times it becomes the long term plan as well, causing company’s business systems to fall farther and farther behind the requirements of the business.

With the way things are in the economy, I expect to see many companies will start looking at the IT budget, but I don’t expect them to do the wholesale cutting they did during the dot-com bust. During the dot-com bust, many companies started to cut IT budgets, but quickly found that they could not do it without adversely impacting the productivity of the rest of their business.

Instead, the companies that invested in their IT departments, and specifically in new software tools and innovation, found that they could run their companies with less people and more software. While this concept only goes so far, many existing business applications severely lack the innovations in key areas due to the focus on the 80/20 paradigm.

Some of this is due to lack of planning, bean counting, and even lack of knowledge that something can or cannot be done within their business systems.

Another reason is the “I can do it better and cheaper” concept that is so prevalent in the MultiValue database market. Since the MultiValue database environment is so efficient and effective in developing applications that don’t take so much time or resources, we have a tendency to overlook all the tools that exist in the marketplace that have already solved many of the application problems and user demands.

Or we look at the tools and say to ourselves, “I can do that better and cheaper”. And we spend the 20% of our IT budget developing a tool that we could have purchased cheaper. Then, we spend a part of the 80% that should be spent on business systems maintaining tools developed in-house, when a third-party tool will always end up with more features and flexibility than we ever have time to program into the “in-house developed” tool

Take a look at the ROI of developing a tool vs. purchasing a tool — 60-200 hours of your time developing the tool is likely to cost you around $4,000-$14,000. Depending on the tools, you have already spent the license costs, plus a few years of support fees.

Now, look at the maintenance costs if you write the tool yourself — 20-500 hours a year on maintenance and add new functionality as needed. Again, ends up being around $4,000-$35,000 a year. Most yearly maintenance costs for these tools are less that this.

Using third-party tools is well worth it, and it allows you to spend more time on focusing on improving and innovating business systems instead of creating new tools.

Improving and innovating business systems is not solely a focus of fixing the bugs in the existing systems, but building the business software framework that can benefit from the new technologies that your CEO is demanding you put to use. More and more companies are looking at SaaS tools and applications to enhance the productivity of their business, as well.

SaaS business applications like SalesForce.com are becoming more and more prevalent in business applications for the same reason that third-party tools help your business. It costs less to have someone else maintain it and keep it current. Then the business can have their IT staff focus more on keeping your business running instead of the interfaces running.

Many companies don’t know, or are not told about, all the tools that exist to solve their problems. Now would be a good time to do a little research to see what tools exists that would make your job easier and cause your IT budget to be lower.

Remember, your CEO or company management is looking for ways to cut costs across the whole business, not just in the IT department. If the IT department can supply them with a tool that will save the company money, they will have no problem purchasing it.

I've had a few people looking at banner ads for the Spectrum Website.   One of the common questions I've had is how to design the banner ad to be the most effective.  There is a lot of information on the web that can be used, but I figured I'd list a few resources that I recommend.

Articles: 

The Complete Guide to Creating Effective Square Banner Ads
http://www.anywired.com/the-complete-guide-to-creating-effective-square-banner-ads/146/

Banner Ad Creation Software

For easy of use, and the most options available, without having to be graphic designer, I have found Websylte 4 to work best.  I've tried a few other banner creating software, but they always seem limited.

Webstyle 4
http://site.xara.com/products/webstyle/

Of course, working with a graphic designer will always get you a better product, but you really need to know what you want ahead of time.

The first and foremost communication should be your company’s standard request form or a formal memo directed to your manager requesting attendance and why. Be sure to include the ROI and cost savings for attending (see below for some examples.) A sample of a memo requesting attendance can be found at http://www.intl-spectrum.com/Conference/WhyAttend.aspx. Schedule a follow-up meeting with your boss to discuss the request.

In your memo and follow-up meeting focus on how attending the conference is relevant to your company and/or your team’ goals and future projects. Here are some talking points to help you make a case for attending:

• International Spectrum has been hosting this conference for over 25 years and it is regarded by the industry as “the premier MultiValue Educational event.”
• I am going to look for a solution for “this” problem.
• I believe “this new technology” could benefit the company and I would like to learn more about it.
• I plan on meeting with “x” vendors to discuss these issues.
• I am going to talk with several companies about “x” technology we are looking at.
  

Ask how to make it happen and get the ball rolling:

• Do I get corporate travel involved?
• Do I need to have dollars in the budget right now? Is there money in another departmental budget that is unused?
• What are some of the things that I should look for while attending?
• Is there a branch office in the area that I can visit?
• If you are serious about purchasing “x” software can a vendor schedule an on-site visit to demo or meet with current users?

It is only natural for an administrator to ask, "How can we justify spending money to participate in a conference when we are facing budget reductions?" The answer lies in the value of the conference's content and the focused interaction it provides. Sometimes learning one new piece of information or gaining better understanding about only one process can justify the entire cost of attending International Spectrum. And making one professional contact can be worth much more.

As companies decrease training budgets, they still require IT to do more with less. As companies increasingly turn to technology to compensate for a lack of employees, the needs for up-to-date solutions and products become more important and cheaper to implement. Since International Spectrum brings all the tools providers under one roof, you save time and money on research by seeing everything in one place.

The cost of attending this conference is often less than the cost of attending classes at other training sites or online. By offering workshops, peer-to-peer discussions, and varied IT and Enterprise presentations, International Spectrum 2009 offers you the knowledge of multiple trainers, professionals, and companies that are focused on the use of different techniques, methodologies, and products designed to increase your productivity and ability to meet the challenges your company or organization faces.

I've written a lot about attending the International Spectrum Conference.  How I've included 4 podcasts that may be more interesting.

Conference ROI - Justifying conference attendance to management

In this Mp3, we will be talking about how you explain to your management why it is important to attend the International Spectrum Conference.

Conference ROI - Hard return

In this Mp3, we will be talking about specific hard return values you can use to help justify conference attendance.

Conference ROI - Intangables

There is a lot of hard ROI number you can use to help justify your attendance, but many of the best cost savings is in the Intangables.

Getting the most from your Conference attendence:

The following Mp3 file takes about the different ways you can get the most from your conference attendance.