Gain insights into the challenges that business executives face delivering their business critical applications at a lower cost and higher value to their end customers.  CEO Jerry Champlin talks about a complete and proven approach to addressing business requirements, no matter the size or scope of the organization.

Social Media is obviously growing into a marketing necessity, and organizations of all sizes should take notice. In fact, a few nights ago I was watching the Denver Nuggets play the New Orleans Hornets in the first round of the playoffs and during a commercial break I got up to grab a drink and heard an NBA commercial advertising to follow the NBA on twitter. This new form of advertising social media is obviously on the rise and there are many reasons that Linkedin, Facebook and Twitter can be effective in companies of all sizes. I recently heard an analogy that I thought was a clear way to explain these forms of social media. Linkedin is the business meeting, Facebook is the water cooler conversation, and Twitter is the trade show. So with that in mind, how can you implement social media in your organization?

Many companies are under extreme pressure to make budget cuts and trim expenses in an effort to stay afloat during the current economic storm that has been looming over our heads for the last 18 months. Often times, there are two major budgets that can be effected by such turmoil.

The first place many businesses look to trim on costs is the IT budget. This is a tricky area to cut, as most companies have a substantial amount of the IT budget tied to fixed costs. However, many organizations are rapidly turning toward outsourcing IT services to experienced vendors in an effort to give employees time to focus their efforts on new and existing projects. This doesn't mean sending jobs across seas to India in search of cheap labor.  This simply means adding an experienced company specializing in application managed services in order to drive profit margin and increase revenue.  This is smart business as it is a safe and cost effective way to ensure the health of the entire IT stack while freeing up internal resources.  

The second budget many companies look to trim in a time of economic uncertainty is the marketing budget.  Now depending on the size of an organization, there are obvious cuts that can be made without putting to much thought into it. Usually the first to go are the high cost media outlets such as TV commercials, video, radio, and print ads. There is a reason that newspapers are going out of business and the most recent Superbowl had to sell discounted commercial spots. Companies marketing to both B2B and B2C are strictly cutting budgets in these areas mostly due to the price tag associated with such mass media.  However there are still many cheap ways to get your message out into the public eye without spending a lot of coin.