As any business owner can tell you, every dollar is valuable, and it’s a challenge not to stretch resources to the limit. This is especially true for small business IT budgets. It’s easy to continue with your current IT personnel, build on old systems, and automatically renew technology licenses, but in the long term, these common mistakes could result in you wasting your IT budget.
1. Poorly Managed or Trained Personnel
Often, the most significant waste is actually your IT staff. If you don’t hire the right skills, train and manage effectively, or provide them with the right technical tools, you aren’t going to deliver an effective return on your employee investment. Similarly, if you expect your non-IT staff to manage your IT systems, it’s unlikely that this will be a good use of their time or your budget.
2. Ineffective Cloud Spend
In recent years, cloud computing has delivered fantastic opportunities for businesses, however, approaching cloud services with a ‘one-size-fits-all’ strategy can lead to spiraling costs. Be smart about the applications you use, be careful with security, and look for ways to streamline and simplify management of your cloud services.
A lack of governance is often one of the biggest money wasters in cloud services. Ensure your infrastructure is carefully evaluated, well designed, and monitored effectively to avoid blowing out cloud costs over time. Similarly, carefully evaluate subscription tools and user access to avoid accumulating numerous small monthly charges that can quickly add up to big dollars.
3. Building on Legacy Systems
Many businesses waste time and money on trying to build on or ‘patch’ legacy systems. While investing in replacement systems can be budget and resource intensive, often it is a better path to future proof resources and reduce the inherent risks of plugging the holes in old IT systems.
4. Not Reviewing Licenses and Vendor Agreements
Simply reviewing your licenses and renegotiating vendor agreements could save you thousands of dollars in unnecessary fees.
Compare what you are paying for with what you are actually using or need; a software vendor isn’t going to proactively tell you this as they can continue to bill you for these services!
Similarly, don’t automatically renew your vendor agreement – shop around or ask for a better deal. Often your managed service provider can negotiate this on your behalf to ensure you’re getting value.
Also consider developing onboarding procedures, and a registry of licences, agreements, and users, so that you can better manage usage and identify unnecessary charges.
5. Under investing in Security
By under investing in security, you increase your risk profile, which risks your business reputation and leaves you exposed to costly cyber attacks.
In today’s cloud-based and remote work environment, without an integrated and proactive cyber security strategy businesses are highly vulnerable and security under investment can end up being an incredibly costly decision.
6. Not Outsourcing IT
Unless the IT function is core to your business, chances are that it could be performed much faster, more effectively, and at a lower cost by a good external IT services and support provider. IT Outsourcing gives your business access to best-practice expertise and technology and due to their economies of scale, can be more cost-efficient.
In Conclusion
If your IT is costing you too much or causing you hassle, consider engaging an expert IT outsourcing provider such as Surety IT. We can help you create an effective IT Strategy, Cyber Security Strategy, manage your IT budget, and efficiently outsource IT support and services.
Contact the friendly Surety IT team today to find out more.
