Information technology managers juggle many responsibilities in their departments. Monitoring their budget and lowering costs are two of the most challenging aspects of their role. How can IT managers simultaneously appease budget demands and properly complete critical projects on time? With a little help and creative planning, it can be done.
How to Reduce Fixed Costs & Control Your IT Budget
Budget cutting ultimately comes down to making smart choices when reducing business costs, choices that will allow your IT department to continue running smoothly. But which choices should you prioritize for your company? Below we take a look at four ways to reduce fixed costs and control your IT budget.
1. Utilize an IT Staff Augmentation Partnership
IT staff augmentation has many benefits, but one of the most prominent is cost savings. By utilizing staff augmentation, business costs are reduced and profitability increases. There are several reasons why this is the case:
- Decreased overhead costs (such as benefits and taxes) associated with onboarding and maintaining additional full-time, in-house staff.
- Reducing the costs of paying year-round employees by accessing augmented employees to work on finite projects.
- Decreasing training costs, as hiring highly skilled professionals accelerates the quality and speed of training and development.
- Gaining employment flexibility by allowing managers to quickly determine which projects need additional resources and a higher budget.
2. Outsource Your Custom Software Development
Investment in customized software solutions may initially seem like an intimidating expense. That is why many companies resort to off-the-shelf solutions, lured in by their lower initial cost. However, outsourced custom software actually costs less over its lifetime. Here are a few ways outsourcing custom software development does this:
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Custom Software Boosts Efficiency and Productivity.
Off-the-shelf applications can slow down your systems, require critical hours of setup and training, and create subpar user experiences. Post-setup, you might still find some abilities lacking for your unique business needs.
Custom software allows you to create efficient user experiences that are more intuitive to your business needs. When efficiency and productivity are improved, and you’re better leveraging the capabilities and functionality of your IT tech stack, cost savings follow.
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Custom Software Cuts Down on Costly Errors.
Forcing a complex workaround process in an existing application can be costly. When your custom-developed software is specifically aligned with your business and does precisely what you need it to, your in-house team can work with it in a way that makes sense for them. This allows you to reduce expensive human errors, while continuing to meet the needs of your customers.
3. Utilize The Cloud
Using the cloud means storage and hardware no longer need to be on-site, freeing IT departments from clunky servers. In addition, no upfront investments are involved as your infrastructure needs are fulfilled by the cloud service provider for a fixed cost.
Cloud computing is like another utility service; the cloud provider takes care of all maintenance and you get everything you need at any point in time for nominal costs. This frees up specialized resources like computer programmers and IT professionals from the tedious activities needed to maintain a costly infrastructure. Allowing you to employ a smaller in-house team and again reduce employment costs.
4. Consolidate Databases
Continually evolving businesses can result in an unnecessarily costly database environment. Defunct databases being backed up while active databases are ignored can lead to under or over utilization of server space, and an overspend in licensing and operating costs.
Reducing the number of databases and spreading active databases over fewer servers allows you to save money by reducing software licensing fees, energy use, and resources. It’s important for your team to run simple checks to detect inactive databases, underutilized database servers, and backup and recovery gaps. You can use this information to efficiently identify candidates for consolidation and close maintenance gaps for critical data protection.
Reducing IT costs has long been a stressful endeavor for many companies. No matter the size of your business, IT budget cutting requires smart choices and the right assistance. And these four cost-reduction tips are just the start. Contact us today to learn how TechGenies can help you save money while utilizing your IT department in the most effective way.
