Question

To PC or not to PC

MoonWalking Inc. is a successful company with several departments that utilize highly standardized computing tasks (like service call centers, data entry departments, and technical support desks). The IT department (with and ever-shrinking budget) must maintain hundreds of PCs up and running with the latest software. Mike J., is in a task force trying to determine aggressive ways to reduce IT costs. One of his ideas is to eliminate 30% of the PCs in the company. His main argument is that most people do not use the computing capabilities at their disposal and most of the time machines sit idle anyway. He thinks that people could share resources and with fewer computers, the IT department would not need the same amount of personnel and could be “rightsized” and/or redeployed, providing the company with the needed cost reduction. Eninem, also part of the task force, completely disagrees. He thinks that the lack of computing capabilities will result in a conflict and as result in a substantial drop in productivity and at the end, the company will lose money. What other alternatives should they consider?

Answer 1

The IT industry is always evolving and MoonWalking INC can consider using the latest technologies to cope with the rising costs and overhead expenses.

IT department can be done away with personnel and reduce the PC's but the data/information has to be stored in all digital forms and for the highly standardized computing tasks it does require personnel working on PCs.

The best alternative could be to use cloud computing services that offer computing and data storage services without active direct management by the user. The costs associated with the direct management of such services is more when compared with cloud computing. For highly standardized computing tasks, MoonWalking INC should opt for Robotic Process Automation for its computing tasks that are standard. RPA helps in reducing the personnel or deploy them to other tasks. The digital transformation to these processes would take time and costs, but in the long run they prove to be advantageous on cost-saving with efficient performances.