How eliminating vendor-paid-junkets cuts costs

Dear Bob …

In “Surgery vs injury,” (Keep the Joint Running, 10/13/2008), as a cost-cutting tactic, you said, “Dial everything back a notch. And be creative. For example, convert vendor-provided perks — junkets for the privileged few, for example — to productive business uses such as vendor-funded broad-based training.”

I am reading into this a little bit, but are you suggesting that if a vendor pays for an entire junket (i.e. no cost to the company) that these be cut out?

I am not pro junket trips but if the entire cost is paid for by the vendors how is this cutting back?

Please note that I am not sure I agree with you on training seminars at all. A long time ago (30+ years) I was going on the seminars (actually partly subsidized by the company I worked for and partly subsidized by the company the seminars were given by).

I would like to say I returned a LOT to the company for going to these seminars. I learned a lot and I was able to get my management some idea where the vendor was going hardware wise and software wise.

This knowledge saved the company I worked for quite a bit of money, I am talking tens of millions of dollars and that was 30+ years ago.

The computer field is ever changing and ever evolving and that is where knowledge really helps out. Now if you were to say funeral home type seminars or the like (if there is one) I might agree with you and maybe a yearly seminar is needed.

If I misread your intent I apologize.

– Dialer

Dear Dialer …

I know of too many junkets … opportunities to play golf, fish, spend time in casinos or whatever, interspersed with just enough business to rationalize the trip … both inside and outside IT. It’s this sort of excursion I was referring to.

My advice was to respond to the invitation this way:

“You’ll probably spend around $10,000 to bring three of us to this event. We have more pressing training needs than this, and you have experts who can address them, so instead of the trip, we’d like you to spend the same money bringing a few of your experts into our company to educate a few dozen staff members, to bring their skills to a higher level.”

This is either cost-cutting, because you no longer have to spend some of your education budget to for these staff members, or it’s cost-cutting because they get training they otherwise would not have received and become more effective. That means you get more work done per person, and so can eliminate a position held by an employee who is just barely good enough.

Or, you don’t eliminate any positions, support the rest of the business better, and the rest of the enterprise becomes more effective.

– Bob