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IT departments are finding themselves strapped for cash these days as IT budgets are slimmed down in the tough economy. ComputerWorld Canada caught up with several IT pros who found low investment ways to make a dent in IT's bottom line. Here are their stories:

Outsourcing e-mail and faxing IT manager Greville Bowles estimates it would have cost at least $10,000 to setup a new in-house Exchange Server with all the latest software and upgrades to manage e-mail and faxing.

A year ago, the Fergus, Ont.-based industrial safety products manufacturer Ralston CanSafe was faced with continuing to purchase new hardware and software to maintain its in-house server or outsource it to a third party. The decision to outsource has saved the company overhead and maintenance dollars. "We're too small a company to justify having an in-house server," said Bowles, who is the sole member of the IT department.

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IT departments are finding themselves strapped for cash these days as IT budgets are slimmed down in the tough economy. ComputerWorld Canada caught up with several IT pros who found low investment ways to make a dent in IT's bottom line. Here are their stories:

Outsourcing e-mail and faxing IT manager Greville Bowles estimates it would have cost at least $10,000 to setup a new in-house Exchange Server with all the latest software and upgrades to manage e-mail and faxing.

A year ago, the Fergus, Ont.-based industrial safety products manufacturer Ralston CanSafe was faced with continuing to purchase new hardware and software to maintain its in-house server or outsource it to a third party. The decision to outsource has saved the company overhead and maintenance dollars. "We're too small a company to justify having an in-house server," said Bowles, who is the sole member of the IT department.

Bowles removed the fax appliance from the network and introduced employees to a fax-to-e-mail service that automatically routes faxes to the intended recipient. He said the decision to outsource was only done after the company became adequately comfortable that such a service would be secure, ensuring that the provider had garnered a well-established reputation in this area. Now more confident with outsourcing, Bowles said Ralston CanSafe will consider outsourcing larger software packages like customer relationship management software once the equipment and licences are up for refresh. "I know we can save money doing that," said Bowles. Going multifunctional

IT manager Wayne Bonaguro used to face the cost and management of multiple individual printers and faxes, until he started replacing them with multifunction machines. "Our customers were still very much old school, they weren't e-mailing, they were sending their inquiries in by faxes," said Bonaguro. Employees at Calgary-based manufacturer of comfort cushioning Carpenter Canada Ltd. now have desktop faxing which saves on paying for monthly phone lines, device toner, maintenance, and paper. It's been about a year since transitioning to the new devices and already, Bonaguro said the savings have paid for the multifunction devices. But the savings haven't just been monetary, it has also had a positive impact on worker efficiency across what is a 250,000-square-foot manufacturing facility. "Some of the smaller satellite locations in the branch are quite a way away from the traditional fax machines that they had. So now they all do it from their desktop," said Bonaguro. Eventually Carpenter Canada will replace the last of its individual devices with multifunction machines, said Bonaguro.

Automating processes

Twice a year, Toronto-based Hospital for Sick Children welcomes a large number of new doctors and nurses as part of its teaching program. Four hundred new staff start on the same day.

"Think of the problems of trying to proactively manage this," said Daniela Crivianu-Gaita, vice-president & chief information officer. "We must have a mechanism to have accounts for all those new people." The provisioning process for new entrants identifies job roles, the applications they have access to, and the security level attached to those applications. But that used to be a cumbersome and manual process, often plagued by misplaced paper forms that IT staff relied on to complete the provisioning process, said Crivianu-Gaita. Three years ago, the Hospital for Sick Children took advantage of the skills of its in-house IT staff to create a process of online forms so accounts for system use and training could be easily created and activated. The benefit was primarily cost avoidance, said Crivianu-Gaita. "We were at the point where we were really thinking 'Oh my god, we need to hire 20 more people to handle these accounts.'" That's not all. The hospital also deployed a relatively affordable imaging software that captures full images of IT systems for maintenance purposes, a move that has eliminated a lot of planned system downtime. Before this, there was no holistic approach, only manual documentation and re-install of components that was subject to human error, said Crivianu-Gaita. "It was all over the map," she said. The IT department has reaped a significant savings of time, particularly for keeping critical applications up and running that are required for patient care, "because it's quite possible that the information is absolutely critical to have at the fingertips of the clinician but is not available or those five, 10 minutes," said Crivianu-Gaita.