DataLink Tips for Keeping Your IT Costs Down

Keeping IT costs down can be quite a challenge, especially if your business is trying to leverage its technology assets for competitive advantage. Simply making arbitrary cuts to produce bottom-line savings will not likely play well as your budget gets passed up the line for approval.

For organizations lacking adequate time and resources to work down their IT budgets while still being able to achieve short and long-term business objectives, DataLink recommends the following course of action…

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.

Consider 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.

Create Standards

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 Desktops and Cloud Services that further reduce IT support costs and offer affordable, built-in business protection.

Return on Investment

DataLink’s goal is to help you optimize the return on your technology investments within a reasonable budget – one that is predictable and that does not incur big surprises for ongoing IT support and project implementations.