It is that time of year again when wild office parties lead to the consumption of a mild excess of alcohol and non-health related foodstuffs and where people, even IT staff, look forward to receiving nice, or at least useful, presents. But for many IT departments in organizations where the financial year terminates on December 31 the last two weeks of this month can also give rise to a period of desperate phone calls to suppliers to find out if they have specific equipment left in stock that is available for immediate delivery or, in especially desperate circumstances, for prompt personal collection. Why? Well by this time of the financial year even the most ineffectual finance director and CIO will have identified if they have any money left in the year's budget that desperately needs to be spent.

These situations naturally then beg the question just what does IT, and perhaps even the business, really want for Christmas? In some companies what to buy in a hurry can be fairly clear, especially if the IT department submitted proposals for a number of projects at the start of the year, not all of which were immediately put into effect. Clearly here it could simply be a matter of looking to see what project did not start for want of capital spend, find a supplier with the gear at the right price and who can deliver in time to satisfy the finance guys that the goods have been delivered in this financial year and off you go.

But sometimes things can be far less precise. In my own past life as IT Manager on several occasions I was faced with the challenge to spend money quickly, on one notable occasion simply to ensure that the company's reported profit for the year was not as large as it would otherwise have been, a result which would have lead to good "profit related" bonus payments across the organisation. As always the FD and MD decided, quite to my surprise, that whilst IT could utilise the capital effectively and to the benefit of the entire company, they could also use the department as a Scapegoat if anyone learned why the bonus payments were not as large as some may have been expecting. After all, to them IT was always a good Bad Guy.

Now some of the projects I had in mind simply could not take advantage of a 4 day spending window but I was left with quite a few possibilities. How did I decide between them? Well, I did a rational cost / benefit analysis over a jacket potato and beer lunch and then went with what my instincts told me were the achievable options that also could be seen to be useful.

So if you find yourself in a position in the next ten days where budget has to be spent what will you be rushing out to buy to benefit your business??