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Budgeting Your Technology? Avoid Overlooking These Key Areas and Making These Mistakes

As 2023 comes to an end, many businesses are planning for the 2024 year. Are you planning to include your IT needs in your annual budget this year? If so, congratulations! You’re doing something incredible to ensure your business’ success. Budgeting for technology can be tricky. On the one hand, you want to be ready for anything, but you also don’t want to overspend and waste valuable resources. It’s easy to focus solely on routine services that keep the lights on. But this could lead you to miss crucial budget categories, leaving you scrambling when unanticipated needs arise. Here are best practices to follow when putting together your 2024 IT budget, and the biggest mistakes that businesses make:

Best IT Budgeting Practices

Plan Ahead:

Don’t leave your IT needs to chance. You’ll be far ahead of your competitors if you have a designated budget to take care of both regular and unforeseen tech expenses.

Audit Your Needs:

What does your organization need in terms of routine IT services, IT projects, technology refreshes and IT-related accident or incident support? These are all areas that are often overlooked, but they shouldn’t be ignored!

Survey Employees:

When determining how to prioritize IT investments and refreshes, conducting employee surveys can be a smart move. Your workforce can provide insights into how their technology is working for them. Figuring out the pain points within your company is the easiest way to determine where to start.

Your Tech Wishlist:

Partnering with an IT service provider can help you to map the cost of achieving all your technological goals for the year, and the right-size your budget based on what is practical for your company.

IT Budgeting Mistakes to Avoid

Going with the cheapest option:

In the digitized era, technology shouldn’t be an afterthought. Investing in quality technology can significantly improve your bottom line. Streamlining workflows, increasing employee productivity, and improving customer satisfaction are all excellent reasons to invest in quality technology. Just as you would not attempt to run a marathon with inadequate preparation, you should not try to run your business with subpar technology. Invest in quality technology and watch the difference it makes in your business.

Thinking that last year’s IT budget will work for this year:

As technology and cybersecurity threats evolve and advance, businesses need to stay up to date to succeed. This can be challenging because budgets are often tight, and it can be hard to justify spending on new technology when old systems are still operational.

You can overcome this barrier by conducting internal assessments to identify pain points and areas where upgrading could improve business outcomes. This information can help make a case for the necessary expenditure to stay relevant and improve your company’s long-term success.

“One person can handle all my IT needs!”:

Augmenting internal resources with an IT service provider can help bridge gaps and give relief to your internal resources. IT service providers can help take on some of the day-to-day tasks and responsibilities. This can help improve job satisfaction and employee retention since your team members will feel appreciated and empowered to take time off when necessary, without jeopardizing your company’s IT infrastructure. Another crucial factor is that an IT service provider can help you in areas the internal IT team doesn’t have adequate bandwidth to cover or in which they do not excel.

Not thinking of the long-term:

Always keep your overall business objectives in mind when budgeting for IT needs. Purchasing solutions that cannot grow with you is wasteful. You will end up spending more money in the long run. You can avoid potential roadblocks and extra costs by planning ahead as much as possible.

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Shopwerx, our client-facing steel progression app, in use by one of our client’s team members.

Dan and his team have been able to meet all Select Engineering challenges with minimal disruption to the business; from fast access to corporate resources thanks to our DaaS solution, to collaborating with internal and external parties utilizing our manager VoIP phone system or accessing SaaS solutions using the fully integrated security solutions.

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We used Framewerx to transition our traditional office to a virtual one. This included VOIP, call recording, video conferencing, VPN, remote working from home accommodations etc. Dan and his team did a fantastic job. They are extremely responsive and client service oriented.

I have worked with Kalyn and his team for many years. He has readily handled all of our IT needs, from designing our IT strategy to our day to day computing requirements and support. Kalyn takes the time to listen to and understand our needs, delivering cost-effective and innovative IT solutions for our small business. I highly recommend working with Kalyn at Framewerx.