Royal Bank of Scotland boss Ross McEwan  admitted that it had failed to invest properly in systems for decades as he apologised for an embarrassing IT failure on the busiest online shopping day of the year in 2013.

This breakdown may come as a shock to RBS customers and instil a sense of smugness elsewhere but be very, very, careful, ask any IT consultant if this is surprising news and not only will they not be surprised they will be shocked it doesn’t happen more often.

We are seeing plenty of bank and big business breakdown and it’s all because of undespending. There used to be an adage that “no-one ever got fired for buying IBM”. They were known for quality of products and service and you paid what they asked, without query. Now its a case of here is your budget, now get the best you can, and off the uninformed employee sets off on the impossible quest.

He went on “We need to put our customers’ needs at the centre of all we do. It will take time,  but we are investing heavily in building IT systems our customers can rely on”

I would take a bet that 99.9% of IT spend is done like this, we are always having to backtrack our proposals to a lower cost, and usually the more expensive the cars outside the lower the IT spend in proportion to the turnover of the company.

The major interest of anyone spending anything on IT is not “will it do the job now and in five years?” but how much can we trim down the price to get it something more reasonable?

When was the last time a Director thought “I want that MERC outside my office but I will go for a lower model because I don’t need everything that it offers and I will save money, I will go for Ford Focus Cmax instead?

There seems to be two misconceptions. 1. It is always more expensive than it should be and 2. They are trying to make as much out of me as they can. Let me blow the myths away for us, and our fellow consultants (the good ones not the ones who are guessing). It will be the price it is, you get what you pay for, Everyone is trying to make as much as they can to survive and thrive, but not at your expense. If the Answer is £5000 why should I say £7000? I am less likely to get the business. However if I say £3000 then that, in your mind will be too much.

Imagine you have had a heart attack and the Consultant tells you its going to cost £5000 to make you better, would you say “You’re wrong, I only want to spend £3,000, give me a cheaper part and operation” . Of course you would, you don’t value yourself do you? Wrong, you’d soon find the extra.

So why jeopardise your business health? Find someone you can trust and take their advice, that’s the hard part isn’t it – trust? Do your clients trust you? or will they be like RBS customers and go elsewhere when the service drops because the IT breaks, never mind you did buy the MERC because you needed it didn’t you?