When it comes to deciding how much you want to put into your IT budget it can often be tricky as you need to be able to retain a modern and adaptable IT infrastructure. This means that all of your technology needs to be up to date to enable you to meet challenges head on and to take advantage in a digital focused environment.
In our latest blog article, we will provide you with 9 steps that your business can take to help you plan your IT budget for 2024.
Step 1: Review your budgets from previous years
If you are looking to put together an IT budget, a good place to start is to review your budgets from previous years. This will enable you to have a good understanding of where to start for your budget and how both revenues and expenses go up and down during certain periods of the year. From this, you will be able to make changes based on any business changes or new priorities.
Step 2: Outline your business priorities
If you happen to be the IT manager in your business, you will understand what is working well and what needs to be more streamlined. Despite this, it is always wise to seek opinions from the users in your business.
This has just as much importance for business owners or those that are in charge of helping your business undergo transformations – you are then able to make changes to your strategies based on the key priorities as well as the key issues. You should expect some good feedback as the whole purpose of this activity is to benefit these users with their support, helping you to gain approval for the IT budget.
If you aren’t sure about how to go about this in your business or not sure how to review your existing IT, then we would suggest that you look to Advantage for a professional IT audit that will help you to identify areas to improve and how to do this.
Step 3: Ensure that this IT budget matches up with your company goals
IT plays an important role in almost everything that your business does. This is where your yearly IT budget provides you with a great chance to drive digital transformation to enable you to stay ahead of your competitors whilst at the same time demonstrating to your key stakeholders that you are looking to plan for the long term as well as the short term.
You will find that this can be achieved by using advanced data analytics which will all come to know as business intelligence. By bringing all of your business reporting into one place along with the capability to reference multiple data sources, business intelligent solutions such as the ever-popular Microsoft Power BI can help you to save time and provide a more accurate picture of how your business is performing. As well as improving productivity, it can also help you to identify opportunities as well as areas for improvement which will help your senior managers to meet goals and grow the business.
Step 4: Analyse all your ongoing expenses
One of the first steps you need to take is to review and analyse all of the ongoing expenses across your business which comes to include:
- Employees (internal & external)
- Network infrastructure and security (backups, cyber security, support and much more)
- Replacing or upgrading hardware and software
- Subscriptions and cloud-based services (Microsoft 365, data storage)
- Line of business applications (CRM, ERP, finance systems)
- Telecoms (internet, data)
- Peripherals (keyboards, mice, headsets)
Step 5: Outline any upcoming project expenses
Are there any significant projects in the pipeline such as an office move or looking to add any more employees to your team? Is your business in the process of completing any digital transformation related activities?
If this is the case, you will need to outline any setup costs, licenses, training, extra hardware, a greater demand for IT support as well as how long it will all take.
Step 6: Make security your top priority
You will find that the most common causes of data breaches are:
- Hacking – where cybercriminals steal login credentials to access the system of a business.
- Human error – where an employee accidentally sends sensitive information to the wrong person or leaves it online by mistake with no passwords.
- Social engineering – where hackers appear as colleagues and try to steal your data as well as passwords.
You will find that most breaches are caused by employees not knowing the cyber security best practices, within your IT proposal you need to outline how you are going to keep your employees safe from cybercrime such as providing them with dedicated cyber awareness training. If you don’t then you will find that investing in the latest, IT won’t be worth doing.
Step 7: Never undercut your IT needs to save money
When you are in the process of preparing an IT budget, it could be easy to simply save money by cancelling things like training that may be seen as a ‘want’ rather than a ‘need’.
However, doing this could lead to even greater problems further down the line. As illustrated above, forgetting about user awareness training may seem like a quick win but could cost your business more in the long term.
Step 8: Work your data to help with your decision making
When you are preparing your IT budget, you need to be able to justify each decision and how it will benefit the business. This is precisely why data can prove extremely useful in IT budgeting.
Step 9: Take advantage of the latest technologies
It is so important for your business to keep up with the latest technologies in order to remain competitive and efficient in a quick and ever-changing business environment. Making sure that appropriate resources are taken into account for your IT budget can help businesses to reap the full benefits of improved productivity, the latest security as well as retaining a competitive advantage.
Over the course of 2023, the growing use of AI has changed the game for many operating across different sectors. To enable your business to remain competitive and reach its full potential, AI must form part of your IT budget. Taking advantage of these advancements such as Microsoft 365 Copilot can enable you to streamline operations, reduce costs and access other revenue opportunities. Refusing to include AI in any form of IT budget means that your business could fall behind the competition where AI-driven innovations are generating results.
Next Steps?
Regardless of whether you are in need of a reliable IT partner or just simply need some help at your busiest times, Advantage is able to tailor any IT solution to your specific requirements. We can offer you both monthly and annual packages which includes proactive monitoring and maintenance of your networks as well as dedicated onsite IT support or if you prefer leading remote IT support, so you can relax in the knowledge that there won’t be an extra cost incurred.
Given how quickly technology develops, it’s crucial that you always have a second opinion from an IT expert before you make radical changes across your business. This is why, at Advantage we can provide you with dedicated IT consultancy where we will work with your business to both optimise and implement a comprehensive IT strategy which helps to align with your overall business objectives.
To get started please give our IT experts a call now to allow us to help you on your journey.
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