MUMBAI, INDIA: 2008 was virtually the year of nightmares for any industry in any part of the world. IT, hospitality, aviation, tourism... you name it and there is a portrait on darkness and uncertainty.

However, the economic tsunami has also made the corporate houses think of corrective measures in all fronts from the size of workforce to operational costs, as the mounting fiscal pressures with plummeting revenues hasn’t spared any companies.

At this juncture, it is crucial for the wide spectrum of industries to reassess their overall strategy, learn the mistakes in the past and bring in a fresh perspective in using IT tools to the beat the recessionary challenges.

Certainly, IT tools like analytics, business intelligence (BI), predictive intelligence (PI), data mining, and data warehousing can enable businesses to take informed decisions, reduce and manage risks, and help them to function in a seamless manner.

These tools specifically work on data across business areas. According to MAIA Intelligence’s CEO Sanjay Mehta, IT tools like analytics and BI would have definitely helped businesses across verticals to get prepared and face the current financial crisis.

“Companies could have reused operational data to one-up the competition with better marketing and branding. With BI, businesses could not only cut back operations, but they could provide a smart and powerful analytics in the hands of the business users across the organization,” Mehta says.

Further, he stresses that by understanding business through the data generated on a daily basis, organizations can be more efficient and better equipped to re-engineer their competitive edge. This reaffirms data’s core significance in business functionalities.

According to Rasesh Shah, Fractal Analytics' vice president and head financial services, any business has four parts – marketing, risk, cost control and collection/recovery, where each part deals with data and IT tools can play major role here.

“Tools like analytics, business and predictive intelligence can help to derive decisions based on data, which is more logical and practical in view with market trends, rather than decision made with gut feelings,” says Shah.

And, he adds that such decisions are vital as one knows the risks involved, its impact and manageability.

Shah considers IT to be business backbone and advises that during the downturn, companies need to study all kind of data, whether it be customer or client data, operational costs on business marketing, phones bills, Internet usage charges etc.

“Applying IT tools across these data with computing methods and calculations help companies to control the operational cost and manage business risks,” he explains.

While, layoffs and job cuts was extensively exercised at the first instance by companies across industries, followed by the cost-cutting and outsourcing as a means to meet the downturn and business challenges.

However, Shah opines that companies should have taken a second look at their business strategies and should have used analytics and other IT tools, before exercising the job cuts.

 “Companies should resort to lay offs at last rather then first because IT has powerful tools that can enable various means to bring down operational costs, increase ROI as well as help to pin-point weak business areas,” Shah concludes.