For many businesses, justifying the cost of IT support can be difficult especially as it is quite hard to measure the return on investment in this sector. However, reducing and cutting down on your IT budget isn’t the right solution and can lead to bigger financial costs.
The best way to cut down on your IT outgoings is by optimising the whole process. Here are 4 ways that you can streamline your IT as a way of saving money:
Standardise reporting
To understand how your money is being spent and whether you are seeing a return on investment, you need something factual and tangible to analyse. You can streamline and formalise your internal IT reporting through Software such as Service desk or Ticketing. This will give you a better understanding of how much time is being spent on your IT, and how efficient and effective your in-house IT support team is at resolving problems. You may find that outsourcing your IT may be a better and more cost-effective option.
This will also pinpoint any reoccurring issues and trends. This will indicate that there is still no solution to the repeating IT problem, and it may not be something that your in-house IT support team can solve on their own, resulting in less profit and higher costs.
Invest in training
In order for your IT support team to be the most efficient, they need to have the most up-to-date knowledge and skillset to solve new IT problems using the best practices. Technology is one of the most rapidly growing industries in the world, with growth comes constant change and it is important that your team doesn’t become out of touch with these changes.
Through regular training and refresher courses, you can be sure that your IT department can pick up on IT issues quicker and provide long-term solutions to them.
It may also be beneficial to provide your whole workplace with basic cyber security training, this is something that we offer at Solutions4IT. These sessions aim to give your team general cyber security awareness and the ability to recognise malicious cyber attack attempts and how to avoid them. By educating your employees, you reduce the risk of common human errors that can lead to vulnerabilities and ultimately cyber attacks.
Consider outsourcing your IT
Choosing to outsource your IT can save you a lot of money, not only in terms of wages but also because you won’t need to purchase expensive IT equipment and cover the cost of specialist IT training.
The biggest advantage to outsourcing is that you gain the same benefits of an in-house IT department, and more, but you pay a fraction of the cost. Most outsourced IT companies will charge you on a pay-per-project basis. Therefore you will only need to cover the cost of the work that has been completed. These companies also work on a much larger scale than a small dedicated IT team and will monitor your business 24/7/365. Therefore, if a technical issue were to arise, they would already see it and resolve it.
Focus on cyber security
Cyber threats are currently at an all-time high. With more cyber attacks on the rise, no business is truly safe from data breaches. To minimise the risk of vulnerabilities within your organisation’s IT infrastructure, you need to ensure that you are utilising the best security practices in order to protect your data.
Good cyber security practices include:
Anti-virus and anti-malware software
24/7 monitoring
Back-ups
Disaster recovery
Cyber security training
Firewalls
VPN
Reporting and audits
Mult-factor authentication
Some of the above processes can be streamlined to help cut costs down, but they are a great place to start if you are looking to up your cyber security. The average cost of a data breach, in the UK, has grown to nearly £2.7 million.
This is why it is so crucial that your business takes all of the necessary security precautions to protect its data. Without any cyber security in place you run the risk of great costs, as a result of a cyber attack, that can be seriously detrimental to your business which could’ve potentially been avoided.
It might be the case that an outsourced IT company will provide you with a better level of service and scale that your business requires in order to grow and develop. Not only that, but you will save money switching over to outsourcing your IT.
Find out more about the benefits of outsourcing your IT and how it can be a more cost-effective decision!
