10 efficient ways to cut your IT costs

cloud security

Every business in the world has a plan written and set in place to help reduce costs and, if they don’t, they should have.

One of the main areas where significant cost savings can be made is in IT. Most businesses rely on a large extent on technology these days and, every year, the costs rise. This is mostly down to businesses updating their current IT software or upgrading their IT hardware, and that makes it one of the most sensible places to start trying to cut costs.

So, how do you go about doing this? Surely you need the software you have so it has to be updated. The hardware has to be upgraded to keep up with demand and with the times. There are plenty of ways where costs savings can be made, and we’re going to tell you about 11 of them.

Outsource Some Tasks to External Vendors

This can save you a huge amount of money, providing you are sensible about what you outsource and where to. For example, your payroll and accounts could be outsourced to an external accounting firm – saving you significant sums of money. If you continue to do this job in-house, not only will you need the right software and the right infrastructure to handle it, you also need to employ one or more staff members to handle the task for you. By outsourcing, those savings are yours.

Use Cloud Storage for Business Data

Another excellent way of saving money, using cloud storage for business data also ensures that all your data can be consolidated in one place. When you use a cloud server to store your data, you are freeing up valuable resources from your own network servers while still being able to have easy access to all the data. This way, your servers can be used more efficiently, and the staff you used to employ to take care of data storage and maintenance can now be used elsewhere, where they are needed.

Review Your Service Contracts Regularly

You should be looking at your service contract twice a year or more. Have a chat with other providers and see what price and services they offer, comparing them with your current provider. There are quite a few companies who will offer you significant savings to get your custom, and you may even find that your current provider is prepared to renegotiate your contract to keep hold of you.

Find the Hidden Costs

All companies have got hidden costs, especially in IT and, if you don’t find them, they can soon spiral out of control and put you over budget.  Make sure you go through every aspect of the IT department and see where costs can be cut, even eliminated.  This means going through subscription fees, bundled licenses, and so on, all of which you might be able to negotiate better prices. If you can’t work out where costs may be cut, consider approaching a tech support team to help you go through everything.

Keep Your Software License Inventory Up to Date

Most companies, especially the larger ones, tend to use a lot of different software, and each different one has its own license. You cannot get away from paying for these licenses, so you need to make sure that you are actually using the software you pay for. Check them bi-yearly and, if you are paying for software you no longer use, get rid of it.

Consolidate Your Servers

It used to be that software applications would have dedicated servers and these pushed the cost of computer networks. Make sure that, if you are still using dedicated servers, you can partition them so more than one software application can use them, thus saving you in a reduction in resources needed for maintaining consolidated servers.

Reduce Your Bandwidth

Many businesses reduce their network costs by reducing their bandwidth. Some larger businesses may not be able to do this, but smaller businesses certainly can. Consider moving some or all of your network to lower cost circuits and have some of your employees work remotely. You could also consider consolidating your application infrastructure to cut costs.

Use a Single Service for Both Phone and Internet

Internet and phone charges are one of the biggest costs to any businesses, and some businesses still use separate providers. Shop around, get quotes for consolidated services – you could realize significant savings for the business.

Use Free Communication Apps

You can reduce phone costs by getting your employees to use free apps from ACMarket AppStore, like WhatsApp, FB Messenger, Viber, and Skype for communication where possible, thus reducing both local and long-distance call costs. These apps are cross-platform and work on both Android and iOS.

Restructure Your Employees

Most IT departments employ more staff than they actually need, generally employing one or more people for specific tasks. Look hard at where your employees are and what role they play. Yes, it is sensible to hire experienced staff who can handle the more complex IT tasks, but some of the smaller and easier jobs could probably be delegated or consolidated into one smaller team of employees. As staff leave or move on, see if their job could be combined with another rather than replacing them with another staff member. You could also consider hiring graduates and college interns – because they have no experience, wages are cheaper.

Reduce Your Employee Turnover

Restructuring your employees makes sense if your workforce is being used effectively, but it also makes sense to reduce turnover to keep your costs low. Hiring and training new staff members costs money, especially if the experienced employees are leaving. Do what you can to retain key, experienced employees to keep your costs down.

The business market is highly competitive, and IT budgets tend to be one of the most overlooked areas of business operating costs. By running through this list and using whatever techniques you can, you could see some significant savings and a real increase in business profit – or the opportunity to invest more money back into the business where it’s needed.