Does it feel like your IT is too expensive? The more efficient your IT processes become, the greater ROI you can achieve with your IT budget. Have you harnessed the potential economy of scale available with modern business technology?
Are you worried you’re not getting the value you expect from your investment in IT?
No one wants to spend money they don’t feel they have to. Especially when it comes to a carefully planned budget, you hate to have to go over it in any way. That’s why, in business, corners are often cut when and where they can be.
This commonly happens with IT. People often rely on cheap, second-hand or inherited technology, and find the cheapest IT company or one-man shop to fix it when it breaks.
What you may not know is that saving money by buying cheap may cost you more in the long run. The fact is that cheap hardware typically doesn't last very long, and limited IT support causes more problems than it solves.
We’ve got good news—IT cost-effect is high, and has only risen in recent years…
A recent study by Computer Economics shows how businesses are getting more for every dollar they spend on IT over the past few years:
When adjusted for inflation, the IT cost per user went from $7,758 in 2019 to $7,602 in 2020, thanks to both cloud technology and automation.
Capital spending has become a small part of IT budgets and continues to get smaller year by year. 31% of organizations surveyed planned to decrease their capital spending, even more so than the year prior.
Furthermore, capital budgets used to occupy as much as 21% of a given IT budget in 2016, but since then it has dropped to 17%.
As you can see, the IT dollar is going further and further for businesses—but only if they’re investing in the right technologies. One way to do so by properly harnessing the cloud…
Choosing a hosted or virtual server over an on-premise server to store your important data comes with a significantly lower upfront cost. A hosted server is maintained at an off-site location and does not require the purchase, installation, or maintenance of hardware or software in your office space.
You pay a predictable monthly fee for your Cloud services plus any time and material costs as needed. You never have to worry about covering the cost of repairs, or dealing with prolonged stretches of downtime—and subsequent loss of productivity and profit—due to equipment failure.
Most issues are dealt with by your IT provider before you even realize there is an issue at all, and in the event, there is a disruption to your services, your provider will be responsible for making sure it's sorted out as quickly as possible.
As your business grows, your technology needs will change. The more business your organization does, the more data it will generate and then need to manage and store securely. More data requires more server storage space, which often means new or additional servers would need to be purchased and installed.
With a hosted server, adding more storage space is as easy as making a phone call, and the cost associated with this addition is minimal. Especially when compared to the cost of buying a brand-new server and having it delivered, installed, and configured.
When the bulk of your data, software, and applications are deployed, managed, and stored in an entirely virtual setting, there is less of a need for ongoing onsite IT support. When your internal IT department's only responsibility is occasional break/fix maintenance, you can reduce the number of full-time staff your business needs to keep your IT environment running.
Taking the cost of an annual salary (or salaries) out of your operating budget can make a huge difference to your bottom line, and leave you free to invest your technology budget more wisely.
Less onsite hardware means lower initial investment and maintenance costs & will save you money each month on your business' energy bill. Fewer pieces of onsite hardware and equipment mean fewer pieces of hardware and equipment that need to run 24/7, continuously drawing power.
This can also reduce the number of battery backups your business needs to have hooked up and running at any given time, saving even more on both hydro and equipment costs.
A smart business owner prepares for any potential scenario. Part of that planning is investing in extra pieces of hardware to have on hand in case an important piece of equipment fails. Big-ticket items like servers that sit in a box in the back of your office and will more than likely be outdated long before they're ever needed are an incredibly expensive way to try and maximize uptime.
Cloud providers will take care of that redundancy for you by offering solutions like multiple failover server sites to make sure that their customers never have to deal with the inconvenience of downtime and lost access to their data and applications. Enterprise-grade security measures and data recovery protocols are generally built right into these cloud-based servers, effectively handling any eventuality on your business' behalf with no extra effort or cost on your end.
Beyond IT assets like hardware and software, you may be wondering whether you’re spending too much on IT support without getting a substantial ROI, especially if you’re new to managed IT services. One of the most common questions we get asked is…
I already pay to get my computers fixed when they break down. Why would I pay that much more for managed services? What’s that money getting me?
There's a reason we get asked this so much. It's a good question because there's a rather large gap between what you pay for “a la carte” computer repairs and fully managed IT services.
Here’s what you need to realize about non-managed IT support—it may only cost you specifically for the time needed to fix your problems, but is it worth it? There are a number of downsides to this kind of IT support…
A minor computer problem can quickly turn into a disaster. This is especially true today with the increase in cybercrime like ransomware. What starts out with just one malicious email can spread throughout your entire network, locking down your data, and your operations.
It could take days to fix your problem—in the meantime, your employees won't have access to the data they need to continue working. You're simply "bleeding money” by the minute. Your support provider then starts charging you after you've already lost work time—time spent on repairs or updates can add up fast.
For all these reasons, managed IT services have become the standard model for IT support. This type of support (i.e. a set of best practices, processes, and tools that, when combined with technical knowledge and proper facilitation, delivers an ideal result to you) is the modern model for IT support for a number of good reasons:
Think about all the time you waste when your IT isn't working; your employees sit around waiting for their email to come back online, or for a document to print, or going through the support process with a technician over the phone. When your IT works correctly and consistently, all that time can be spent on your actual business.
Dealing with IT problems on a daily basis gets old fast. The time and stress involved can have detrimental effects on productivity and efficiency (and your stress level). Beyond your time and money, managed IT services help you reduce your stress and gain a lasting peace of mind when it comes to your IT.
Managed IT services are designed to maximize your budget and provide the support and solutions you need to stay focused on your important work and keep under budget.
Need help assessing your IT expenses and achieving a greater ROI? Book a meeting with the N-Tech Consulting team.
