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Publish Date

Jun 01, 2020

Pivot to Savings: How IT Can Be an Agent of Change in Cost Control for Faster Recovery

Jeff Shaffer, Managing Director

Service / Industry: ,

As Private Equity sponsored companies pivot to recovery coming out of the COVID-19 crisis, the chance to re-design business models and business processes are a hidden benefit. Information Technology (IT) will be an agent of change, playing a significant role in cost controls and process re-design. A key element of this re-design will be companies’ ability to reduce fixed commodity-type process activity costs and replace them with automation in a variable, consumption-based model. With human capital identified as the largest expense for most companies, automation provides a mechanism to control this cost while not wrestling away value-added activities. What is different today versus prior situations is that benefits can be achieved with minimal upfront cash.

Before companies can take advantage of an automated variable consumption-based model, they need to get their house in order. At A&M, we see a stair-step approach for IT to lead and support the move to the “next normal” (born of the COVID-19 crisis) and encompass the three steps of remediation, data transparency and “Hyperautomation”.

Read the full article to learn how technology automation tools can drive cost controls for companies re-assessing their operations overhead.

Authors

Jeff Shaffer

Jeff Shaffer

Managing Director

Jeff Shaffer is a Managing Director with Alvarez & Marsal Private Equity Services in Los Angeles. He works in the Operations Group and specializes in pre- and post-acquisition operations assessment and integration. Mr. Shaffer’s primary areas of concentration are post-merger integration, carve-out planning & execution, due diligence, IT strategy, systems integration, and interim management.

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