We just wanted to provide a public notice that Microsoft intends to increase the price of its Microsoft 365 and Office 365 offerings. If your business relies on these tools in its operations, you can expect to see your costs for them go up, regardless of where they are sourced from.
That’s the bad news. The good news is, we can help you get the greatest mileage out of these solutions… potentially by introducing you to capabilities that you have yet to take advantage of.
When budgeting capital for your company’s technology, it isn’t always simple to know how much to allocate. In fact, a lot of times it can be a convoluted and troublesome experience. Our consultants spend quite a bit of time and effort working out workable budgets for our clients and today, we thought we would talk about how we come about our figures to comprehensively support a business’ technology.
A survey from Splunk and Enterprise Strategy Group indicates that organizations tend to invest a significant amount of their capital into cybersecurity. Even more interesting is that 88 percent of respondents in this survey reported that they would increase these investments, with 35 percent reporting that they will be substantial. What other insights can we glean from this survey?
Most modern businesses are using information systems to accelerate their profitability. In fact, small and medium-sized businesses are expected to spend over $650 billion in 2021. The question becomes what technologies are they spending their money on, and are they objectively the right investments to make? Today, we will unpack these questions by highlighting two investments that many businesses are pursuing.
Sad to say, but for the foreseeable future, cost control is going to be the number one priority for almost every business. With the COVID-19 pandemic into its sixth month, and revenue streams interrupted, businesses are being extremely cautious with their capital. One place where most businesses can cut back is on printing. Let’s discuss how to cut your organization’s printing costs.
Millions of businesses are being affected by the COVID-19 outbreak. As a result, it may not surprise you that you will have to adjust your budget to accommodate the massive amount of changes that we will see when the outbreak is handled and everyday life begins to normalize. Today, we thought we’d take you through some of the financial challenges your business is sure to have to deal with when the stay-at-home orders lift.
Running a business isn’t cheap, which results in budgets becoming strained under their operational needs. A major contributor to this strain is often the security-focused line items. However, there are a few means and methods to getting the most out of your security budget.
It’s clear that one of the best ways you can improve your organization’s operations is through investing in new IT solutions, but these expenses change from year-to-year. However, as years go by, the amount that your business invests in IT is sure to shift. Though this year saw a minor decrease in IT spending, Gartner predicts that next year will be another huge opportunity to invest in new technology and IT systems.
Specifically, Gartner predicts a 2.9 percent growth rate in IT expenditures during 2017. ComputerWorld reports this growth as part of a global IT spending of $3.49 trillion. Gartner also predicts that spending on devices will increase by 0.4 percent to an astounding $600 billion. Global software spending growth will exceed 7.2 percent to $357 billion, while IT service spending will increase by 4.8 percent to $943 billion.
This growth is attributed to businesses’ desires to grow and become authoritative figures in their communities and industries--or so says John-David Lovelock from Gartner. He states, “Leading organizations, as well as those that wish to lead, are spending on IT and nurturing their IT investments as the means to grow their business.”
One of the most noteworthy trends in these growing numbers comes from the fact that organizations are increasing their spending while cutting out unnecessary costs. These figures show that businesses want to eliminate unneeded expenses, but also to reinvest the saved revenue into new, more innovative technology solutions. In other words, organizations are attempting to invest their returns to improve operations, and it’s easier to do so than you would initially think.
In fact, this increase in IT spending can mean that businesses are more willing to invest in enterprise-level solutions that create more flexibility and scalability in the workplace, allowing for more growth. The right technology services have an uncanny knack for decreasing capital expenses and freeing up valuable time and resources for more important endeavors. One way that businesses are doing so is by outsourcing services like help desk support and email hosting to third parties in order to free up work hours and reduce their bottom line.
PCSOFT specializes in outsourced IT, and as such, we want you to know that spending more isn’t always the right answer to maximizing your technology’s ROI. Our proactive managed services seek to reduce capital costs for organizations that want to invest their budget dollars into more lucrative aspects of running a business. In fact, managed services are the ideal way to reduce costs while investing in your business’s future, so why not give them a shot?
For more information, reach out to PCSOFT at 02 98730080.
When it comes to making progress on your organization’s future, your IT budget presents your business with a major roadblock. We bet that it would feel great to eliminate the stress associated with your IT budget. Here are three ways that you can plan for your business’s future and keep that IT budget slimmed down.
Putting together an IT budget that’s a recipe for success is much more difficult than it sounds. Every year you run the risk of encountering crippling technology issues if you don’t take the proper precautions. If your budget isn’t prepared for problems with your IT infrastructure, it could have disastrous results. Here are five ways you can avoid skipping a beat when planning for your business’s IT budget.
Consider Your Long-Term Goals
While it’s definitely important to consider the short-term goals of your IT budget, it would be foolish if you didn’t start planning for long-term investments. It’s no mistake that organizations are continuously turning to services like cloud computing and Software as a Service-type investments. Businesses are turning their standard capital expenses into operational expenses because it’s cheaper and easier to manage than the heavy investment of up-front costs. It’s easier to scale and change in the event that something doesn’t go according to plan further down the road.
Invest in Your Staff’s Training
It’s one thing to have the latest IT solutions ready to use for your business, but another entirely for your staff to understand how to use them. Some businesses don’t invest in the training of their employees longer than they have to, and this is proving to be a big concern. If employees don’t know how to use your technology solutions, they will waste time that could be better spent elsewhere; or worse, they could be making mistakes that you need to fix somewhere down the line.
Consider Your Storage Options
Again, it’s important to consider the long-term ramifications of your business’s data storage techniques. Is there one centralized location for all of your data? If so, what would happen if you were to lose access to it? How do your employees access this information? Do they need continuous access to your business’s data, or only in-house? These are the questions you want to answer. Having a fool-proof backup and disaster recovery solution can help protect your data from being lost due to a freak disaster or hardware failure while cloud storage increases your employees’ access to the data and allows them to work remotely from any approved device.
Always Anticipate Hardware/Software Upgrades
Hardware failure can completely derail your IT budget if you don’t plan to accommodate it. Hardware and software complications are difficult to deal with if you don’t explicitly plan to resolve them as quickly as possible. Your budget should always have assets allocated toward mitigating and replacing technology that’s critical to the success of your business. Otherwise, you could be dealing with huge expenses that will, without a doubt, break your budget, and force you to come up with funds from elsewhere.
Use Outsourcing and Consulting Services When Possible
Outsourcing certain responsibilities of your IT management (or even all of it) can have a positive effect on your budget, time that could be spent managing and maintaining your technology would instead be devoted to managing your business and ensuring its efficient operation. You can enjoy the benefits of being a business owner without worrying about constantly managing your technology.
For more ways to improve the functionality and return on investment of your business’s technology, give us a call at 02 98730080.