Paradoxically, customers are finding themselves in a situation where they may not be getting any additional budget compared with previous years, but with increased expectations for quality and higher security risks, whilst still responding to external pressures beyond the control of IT or even the broader organisation. 

Top 5 things to maximise your budget: 

1. Define your services and set expectations - be clear with consumers of the technologies that you provide, explaining what they get, when they get it and what they can expect for the budget you’ve been given. Be able to articulate why you have the constraints you have, as you’re going to be challenged once you set these. 
   
   
2. Have a strategic plan for capital spend - when you do get additional capital money to spend, make sure you're spending it on a set of activities that strategically improve and transform the business experience. Ensure new project requests from your organisation align with your strategy, and don’t forget any implications for the ongoing annual recurring budget. 
   
   
3. Smart sourcing and supplier management - pull together and keep up to date a contracts register and put a contract review cycle in place to continually review the value that you are obtaining from the contracts, as well as being aware of competitive alternatives that not just save money but give you financial flexibility. 
   
   
4. Know your costs in detail - perform a total cost of ownership assessment for the current spend on technology, and be clear on where you're spending most, including costs of people to run, support and maintain the technology. You'll discover ways to save money by simply understanding this, enabling you to make stronger business cases for change. 
   
   
5. Use data to get stable and simplify - if you’re having lots of service outages, dealing with lots of incidents or problems or your technology landscape is overly complex then make sure you’re collecting data on why and prioritise plans to get to a simple and stable platform before taking on any new and innovative transformaton projects. This will reduce effort over time and create headroom in your operating expenditure that you can strategically allocate to becoming increasingly efficient. 
   
   

Having and analysing data which gives you operational insights at your fingertips is essential to enabling this efficiency in your organisation. If you’re struggling to maximise your budget, please get in touch for a no-obligation conversation