Cost Effective Technology Budgeting
IT budget guidelines and best practices...
Planning for growth?
- Set up two categories - one for ongoing support and one for new IT investments.
- Calculate the maintenance and support expense of existing equipment.
- Determine budget for any new technology initiative.
- Include new projects or major system upgrades that support business development beyond normal operations.
- Depending on project complexity, budget for testing, possible downtime and unexpected delays.
No major changes ahead?
- Use your IT costs from last year for your forecast
Recommendations that keep IT costs down
Bring in a Trusted Technology Advisor
Choose an outside IT team or hire qualified staff that will recommend solutions based on business requirements,
not the latest trends. Request a technology plan that supports a fixed monthly fee or a predictable monthly budget.
Take a proactive approach to support and maintenance
To limit the need for IT support, choose a managed service model that includes monitoring, management and
notification tools. This approach ensures that upgrades and security patches protect your assets and that hardware
or applications issues are identified and resolved before major failure.
Automation
Implement automation tools that allow your IT team to replicate routine tasks such as software updates to your systems.
Time required to manage your infrastructure can be greatly reduced, which saves on IT support expense.
Standardization
Creating standards for IT infrastructure reduces costs. For example, a standard template for user desktops that
includes all required software and settings will streamline upgrades and replacements.
Redundancy
Implement restoration capabilities such as automated data and desktop image backups. Consider Virtual Desktop
and Cloud Services to further reduce IT support costs and offer affordable, built-in business protection.
