I was sitting with a consulting client evaluating their readiness for the economic recovery, using my basic economic consulting process. The client mentioned that he had considered a project to automate one of their manual processes, but it didn't seem to pencil out. It turns out that was three years ago.
Today I was in a conversation with my favorite information technology consultant, Caleb Jones, and he talked about the value of a periodic IT audit within a company. Putting the two conversations together, I just had to grab these charts to compare labor costs with the cost of technology.
The CPI chart is not perfect; it reflects hardware but not the consulting services often needed to implement IT solutions. But the gist of the message is very strong: Labor costs are rising, while computer costs are falling. If you made the perfect decision three years ago, that decision is now out of date.
Gee, you thought running a company would be easy?
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