Without question building the perfect IT budget has been top of the priority list for many businesses as they realise that maintaining their IT infrastructure preparing for every eventuality was critical. This was particularly the case during the COVID-19 pandemic as more and more businesses shifted to remote working.
In our latest blog article, we will provide you with 6 of our best tips for building the perfect IT budget for your business.
1 – Delve into past performance to prepare for the future
The best place to start when you are looking to build the perfect IT budget is to delve into the IT performance of your business in previous years to find out what has happened and to give you a starting point. By doing this, you will be able to establish what money was both coming in and going out of the business every month, every quarter and every year. From this, you will be able to adjust this based on predicted trends and new priorities.
2 – Outline your top targets
There are no doubts that as an IT manager, you will understand what your top targets will be for your IT and what can be improved going forwards, however there is no harm in seeking opinions outside of your IT team.
This has just as much importance for business owners or those that are tasked with digital transformations which will allow you to make changes to your strategy based on end users’ priorities and pain points. This must be done as these individuals will have the most to gain from the budget items you are putting forward and having them on side will be critical to getting this budget approved.
If you are a business that has no idea what to do when it comes to assessing your overall IT performance and current IT systems then why not let us conduct a comprehensive IT audit for your business?
3 – Ensure that everything matches up with your overall business goals
There are no doubts that the use of IT is vital to the smooth every day running of any business. Therefore, you will find that your annual IT budget provides you with the perfect chance to encourage a full digital transformation to allow your business to stay ahead of your competitors whilst at the same time illustrating to the most important stakeholders that you are looking to build the long-term success of the business.
A great way of achieving this is through the use of data, which we more commonly refer to as business intelligence. By bringing all your reports together in one place gives you the chance to combine different data sources with business intelligence solutions such as Microsoft Power BI which can enable you to become more efficient by spending less time on manual reporting, allowing you to build live views of your performance. As well as helping to improve your overall productivity it can help you to learn where you can take advantage of opportunities and areas for improvement, which is extremely helpful for your senior management team who want to meet goals and grow the business.
4 – Catalogue all the IT expenses across the business
It is important for you when putting together a suitable IT budget to consider the costs already happening across the business such as:
- Employees (internal and external)
- Network infrastructure and security (backups, firewalls, data centres, cyber security)
- Replacing or upgrading both hardware and software
- Existing subscriptions and cloud services
- Existing line of business applications (CRM, ERP)
- Existing telecoms
5 – Have security at the forefront of your mind
From our vast experience, we have found that the following are the main causes of data breaches:
- Hacking – where login credentials are stolen to access the systems of a business.
- Human error – where staff make a mistake by sending sensitive information to the wrong contact or leave it online without any password protection.
- Social engineering – where fraudsters pose as someone from the business to gain access to either money or financial details.
Given the fact that most breaches are a result of employees that don’t have much knowledge of cyber security best practices, your IT budget must take this into account on how they are going to be protected from cybercrime, you could consider getting them some tailored cyber awareness training to help with this learning process. If you don’t then you could find that all the time and resources, you put into the IT system is for nothing.
6 - Don’t take shortcuts to reduce costs
When going through your IT budget planning, you could be of the opinion that you can bring down the overall costs by stalling or cancelling things like training courses that could be seen as a ‘want’ rather than ‘essential’.
However, you don’t want to be taking any unnecessary risks that could come back to bite you in the long run.
Next Steps?
If you are a business that is looking for extra IT staff during peak times, Advantage can give you a bespoke solution tailored to your business. We can provide you with dedicated onsite IT support or remote IT support for your business which will allow you to create an IT budget without the worry of unexpected costs. Want to get started with Advantage? Why not give us a call today?
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