Paradoxically customers are finding themselves in a situation where they may not be getting any extra budget than previous years but with increased expectations in quality and higher security risks, whilst still responding to external pressures that are out of the control of the hands of IT or even the broader organisation.
Top 5 things IT services can do to maximise the IT budget:
- Define your services and set expectations - be clear with consumers of the IT services 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.
- 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 the service. Ensure new project requests from your organisation also align to your strategy and don’t forget any ongoing annual recurring budget implications.
- Smart sourcing and supplier management - pull together and keep up to date 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.
- Know your costs in detail - perform a total cost of ownership assessment for the current spend on IT 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 just understanding this it will enable you to make better business cases for change.
- Use data to get stable and simplify - if you're having lots of service outages, dealing with lots of incidents or problems or your IT 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 projects. This will reduce effort over time and create headroom in your operating expenditure that you can strategically spend on becoming more and more 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 IT budget, please get in touch for a no obligation conversation