Save money by changing the way your business uses technology
Unnecessary IT complexity reduces effectiveness and innovation while adding costs. You may be surprised at how much you can save by making small adjustments to the way your business uses technology.
Find the Costs
You cannot cut costs until you understand what they are, so take a thorough look at your business's technology infrastructure. Look for redundancies in the system. Are you paying twice to do one single job? Are you paying multiple licensing fees for overlapping operating systems?
According to a recent survey by the Waterstone Management Group, the average small business has between 18 and 25 applications [3] that are used to run the company, process orders and gather customer information.
The Waterstone survey also revealed that just one employee costs an average of $700 per year in technology costs like services and software. Do you know how much you are spending on technology per employee?
Move to the Cloud
One of the best ways to consolidate information and cut technology [4] costs is to move some of your business's data to a cloud server. Transitioning data to a cloud server frees up your IT systems while giving you complete control over your information.
Think of using a cloud server as renting a storage space for your home. You may want to get rid of some clutter to free up space around the house, but you don't want to get rid of the stuff. So, you put it in offsite storage, where it stays safely until you need it. That's exactly what a cloud server does for your data.
By freeing up space, cloud servers also boost efficiency and productivity in your IT systems, which helps cut technology costs even more.
Maintain Your Systems
Don't wait for a crash or hard-drive freeze to invest in tech-support. Instead, hire a tech-support company to monitor your systems and prevent tech catastrophes. Save money by investing in continuous support instead of spending exorbitant fees on emergency service calls.
Consolidate Your Resources
Consolidation of your IT resources and infrastructure leads to increased security, simplicity and efficiency. Reduce the amount of physical servers in your business by focusing on virtual machines, centralize files in one location on the network and use a multiple-directory sign-on service to reduce costly distributed systems.