AICC Associates Ask (CONT’D FROM PAGE 20)
vestment strategies, they’re putting those plans on hold. Is it the same with the independents? Urquhart : We have a few balls that are already rolling that we have to see through to the end. We’re not going to derail any activities that are ongoing, but we are going to turn down the volume a couple notches. Palmeri : We’ve got some projects that are just wrapping up and should be July or August if not a little sooner and then it’s really sitting back and just kind of taking a breath of what we have right now. Kirkpatrick : This year we are not spending like we were pre-pandemic. We’re investing a lot into software appli- cations, enhancements that will help us with automation to reduce headcount and to help automate processes to make people faster and better. Bertram : We’re always spending a little bit of money and sometimes we spend a lot of money. We’ve created de- partment buckets where they’re watching their budgets more closely but we’re not spending wildly. But we, too, are upgrading software. We’re looking at different work- flows all the time. We’re always looking to do bells and whistles. We like technology. Some people don’t like tech- nology, we do.
retire. We didn’t replace them, we shifted the work to other people. We did a round of layoffs in February, five to seven percent of the workforce. There’s some mentality, ‘If you don’t need those people today, cut them loose and they’ll come back tomorrow.’ They’re not, they’ll go do something else so that’s a caution point. Keeping people, keeping staff committed to that — at this point, we’re in with that. Palmeri : We’re revisiting what we did in 2008 and 2009, kind of just dusting it off under the Excel file and just look- ing at things and how we’re purchasing, how we’re moving business between our locations, looking at productivity gains. We’ve worked hard the past couple years just trying to get the staffing up to where it needs to be and we’re really reluctant to cut those levels right now. It’s taking too long to get them trained and in place. Urquhart : We are being very cautious. We are going to sit on available cash. We’re going to divest the investments we made recently and we’re going to spend the money ju- diciously, and, to phrase that in an optimistic way, if we find opportunities or chances to be flexible and do new things in the near future, we will have the cash on hand to do so. Morelli : We’re hearing in the marketplace, specifically with integrateds, they are pausing their investment capital in-
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24 May 15, 2023
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