Optimizing Your IT Budget: Smart Investments for Small Businesses
It’s often been said, “You’ve got to spend money to make money.” But when it comes to IT services, too many small business owners look upon the money they spend as an expense rather than an investment. Ideally, when you budget for IT, those funds are going to make you money. In fact, you should be able to calculate a return on investment, based on cost savings in other areas and increased productivity that translates into greater revenue. Unfortunately, it’s easy to blow your budget with little to show for it, unless you get reliable advice from a reputable IT services provider. In this article, we’ll outline a few smart steps suitable for small businesses. To truly customize a plan that maximizes ROI, you should consult an IT professional with a reputation for enabling small business success.
How to maximize ROI for your IT budget
The first step towards optimizing your IT investment is to audit your prior expenditures. You must examine your prior budgets and review how much you spent and where that money went. Did you get a reasonable return on that investment? If not, why not? Really scrutinize your past IT spending to see if you can identify errors you might have made in your planning and execution. Common errors include:
- Buying equipment you didn’t use or underused
- Paying for program features you didn’t use
- Neglecting to train employees, so they couldn’t fully exploit the IT features
Next, you need to assess your current unmet needs. These can include:
- Additional remote capabilities
- Employee training
- Faster, more accessible Wi-Fi within the workplace
- Better customer relations
It helps to audit your business processes as well to determine where you have pinch points, bottlenecks, and backlogs. These issues can slow fulfillment, which negatively affects the customer experience, and impede collections, which dries up your cash flow.
Once you’ve completed the audit process, you’ll have a better understanding of your current capabilities and your unmet needs. At this point, you want to engage a knowledgeable IT professional who can help you craft a targeted plan that fits your budget. Together, you can develop a strategic plan that:
- Prioritizes your needs
- Allocates resources on a manageable schedule
- Includes a timetable for retiring/upgrading components
- Provides enough flexibility to adapt to changing circumstances
As with any budget, you want your expenditures to have the greatest impact for your business. For this reason, you must select an IT consultant whom you can trust to put your needs first.
Key features of a smart IT budget for small businesses
Different companies will have different priorities and areas of need, but virtually all will benefit from these three features:
- Exploiting cloud computing and SaaS programs — Why buy when you can lease? Cloud computing enables you to save substantially on hardware, maintenance, and office space. You rent server space at a remote location, and the provider is responsible for upkeep and security. Data security is an attractive advantage of cloud computing, providing robust protection against breeches and enabling you to recover data in the wake of a disaster.
- Retaining a reliable Managed Service Provider — Contracting with an MSP frees you from having to hire a dedicated IP professional. Yet, you can get ‘round-the-clock service, even during off hours. MSPs handle every aspect of your IT network, and can offer periodic advice on adjustments you should make to improve performance.
- Training your employees — Perhaps the most crucial purpose of a digital network is to optimize employee performance. The finest software and hardware in the world won’t do your company any good, if your employees don’t know how it works. Sure, most programs these days are fairly intuitive and workers can usually grasp the basics. But “the basics” won’t take efficiency to the next level. Training is also vitally important for security, because most network breaches result from employee error, not software failures.
At KMF Technologies, we understand the constraints of operating a small business. We want to see you get the biggest bang for the buck out of your IT budget, so that you can compete with larger companies that have seemingly inexhaustible resources. By taking a close, personal look at your business, properly diagnosing your issues, and recommending targeted solutions, KMF Technologies can help you maximize your IT ROI. Call us today.
