13 ways to act despite bad fortune.

2020, Jul 23    

Photo by Anthony from Pexels

Do you feel in this economical crisis the bottom line of the (big) software company you work for is out of your hands? Unless you are accustom to selling the software licenses or selling the consultancy, you might feel like so. Clearly, every hour written to a billable project is an hour gained still. However, maybe you are not fully billable and as a consultant that is out of your control. Crisis has become normal. Though it is inevitable your top management are frantically dealing with business numbers that would have induced cardiac arrest in Q4-2019, you have not been laid off. I myself am grateful, and yet, I observe some complacency with that little miracle around me. I do not judge, I merely observe how the shielding by top management of a big corporate institution like the one I work at feels endlessly more insulating than the management of a small company felt to me, when in 2007 the subprime mortgage crisis hit. That small company was emotionally on fire, for everyone to feel. You might feel at drift, a lack of control of your destiny as part of your big company mothership.

You can do more than that.

You can help your company through the crisis by selling more and spending less. As a cog in the big operation you probably cannot ‘save the day’ on your own, by closing a deal for a huge bag of money. That does not stop you from helping a team sway their prospects’ decision to buy. So let’s consider general Survival strategies to Retain revenue, Increase revenue, pull-forward revenue, and reduce cost.

You can keep money coming in [retain revenue]

Considerable revenue of software companies is in yearly maintenance subscriptions from their live customers. Even if your specific team may lack the target to grow maintenance revenue, those are the customers you know intimately, and their revenue pays our bills now. If you help keep a customer happy enough not to stop their subscription, that is income retained.

1. Dig in your memory beyond the customers you worked with in the past 12 months. Which customer could use some tender loving care on a unique issue you can (help) fix? Modest Tender Loving Care can be free of charge, and is always cherished.
2. Track the news on all customers you worked with. If any customer is announcing to shift business focus, improvising due to the crisis, or shutting parts of the business down, perhaps the systems you developed for them needs major adjustment. In fact, they might be tempted to stop using it. Instead, offer your help to transplant your software or to re-apply it. For example, if your customer is adding COVID-home-delivery, perhaps put them in touch with another customer of yours (around their corner) that knows how to set this up, to share know-how in their community.

In Q4 of 2020 every IT manager needs to decide about renewal of their licenses & subscriptions. If that IT manager remembers you really ‘had their back’ through tough times, that might leverage an emotional leg up over other ‘expenditures’.

You can sell more services [increase revenue]

To increase revenue we all fantasize of having better software, to build that amazing product to put …on the shelf. Well, although better software is good, the shelve is not revenue. It comes down to selling services. Big deals may be hard to find now. Smaller deals are after care and modifications that make a sensible investment to the customers you already have. The same goes for selling training, and re-configuration.

1. Can you sell a Change that saves the customer money? Example: if you change a component to open source, they can stop paying licenses to a third party?
2. Can you sell a refresher training, to save the customer money? Perhaps what you put in place years ago, can save a bundle of money in these weird times, but the only key user you trained to no longer works there?
3. Can you “sell” an audit? You audit the solution in the field (skype calls!) report on parts where the interplay of your software and their business have degraded, but can be salvaged with an ROI.

You can invoice customers sooner [pull-forward revenue]

You can only invoice Services against time booked. Most companies have some timesheets ERP setup (SAP anyone?)

1. Do you submit your timesheet, and approve all your team’s timesheets, without any delay?

In crisis, a common extra cost is shortage of cash. Pulling forward revenue is the process of sending the invoice as early as possible, to be paid in time, so your boss can pay your salary, lease car, office rent, … from that cash instead of taking out loans while waiting to send the customer invoice. Having cash saves paying interest.

1. Can you support a fellow overworked project team so they can make their deadline, or even speed up the schedule, to the point that work is actually invoiced a month early?

You can be frugal [reduce cost]

A software company’s biggest cost is salaries, and that is not what I am suggesting you reduce. Your management probably already requested to spend (some) leave days though. Still, now is a great time to request that (unpaid) sabbatical you have been dreaming of, or to request to work part-time to see more of your loved ones. So only reduce on the salary topic if that is a Win-Win for yourself and the company. (8)

Besides salary what cost do you incur? Lease of your company car and fuel? In Corona times you are working from home, with the car parked, so leave it to the experts at your company. In the same breath: software licenses, laptops, phones - leave that alone too. Your IT department is the expert here, trust them…. unless

1. Can you do without that extra special license/SaaS subscription specific to you?

Here’s where someone exclaims “coffee, snacks, paper in the printer!” Thanks, but anything tied to your office life was not being replenished while everyone was working from home. Regardless, it is not your thing, leave it to Facilities management, alongside with the Purchasing department wringing out suppliers to their last tea bag in cross-national negotiations.

What else do you spend? You have expensive habits, and you curate a digital museum.

1. Can you reduce bandwidth? When you send email with a sizeable attachment consider that recipients of less internet savvy countries i.e. places where internet bandwidth is scarce (you know - where your Zoom calls get interrupted all the time!) incur cost to receive it. Drastically reduce your PPTs file size?

2. Can you reduce storage footprint? Shared and private network folders, particularly old project folders are overflowing with junk we will never need anymore, in triple (version 1.1b.FINAL-BobComments). If you scan the folder for large files, you can scrape off gigabytes no one else dares to delete but you.

The more people do, the later IT needs to purchase drives. And yes, storage is very expensive. It is a common misconception that in this day and age storage is cheap.

1. Can you reduce idle CPU consumption? If you turn off and return virtual machines to their pool, you sure can. In my place of work we have hundreds of long closed project development VMs buzzing away, burning up the ozone layer, doing nothing but advancing the clock. IT can archive the image, and spin it back up within a workday if we need it though. But they are waiting for someone to put an individual VM to sleep. If your company runs their own hardware, this is a money saver.

2. Can you prune databases? Our VMs connect to a shared SQL server operated by some DBMS power user “the dude”. The DB server stores gigabytes of test data often in multiple instances. Pruning junk, and archiving datasets that only serve offline VMs saves money. This is not automatic, and the DB infrastructure is particularly expensive to grow. If like us you have “big-data” customers they lay a heavy footprint.

You see you do have some power to help your company through this crisis, even if they are little bits, and even if you are a little cog in a big machine that insulates you and still pays your salary. Come up with more and let me know! The constraint is to use what you have plenty of (time on bench) and without spending any cash,

retain revenue, Increase revenue, pull-forward revenue, and reduce cost.

I wish you well, Felix

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