IN MY OPINION: Institute of Management companion Bridget Blow, CEO of ITNET plc, recommends outsourcing as one way of handling the downturn positively

The analysts had been predicting it for a long time, but we now appear actually to be experiencing the influence of the economic downturn.

Such straitened times require drastic measures, as the almost daily parade of cutbacks, profit warnings and redundancies demonstrates.

Downsizing and consolidation have played a part and will continue to do so, but I believe that many businesses devote too much time to considering what costs they can cut out of the organisation and not enough about what a given process can add.