Lowering Your I.T. Costs

The economy is bad. Companies are hurting. Workers are being let go, or seeing their pay cut. Besides outsourcing your I.T. to the I.T. Management Company, what can you do to lower I.T. costs?

Look very carefully at all of your maintenance agreements. Many companies accept that fact that they need to pay tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of dollars in maintenance and support. You probably don’t.

If you have a support agreement for your ERP system, call the organization providing support and ask what the alternatives are. Wouldn’t it be better to not renew that $30,000/yr agreement if you knew you can buy support as needed in $5000 blocks?

Look at every monthly recurring cost. How many of these do you really need? How many can you cancel?

The ideal I.T. department will be able to move quickly to lower costs dramatically. If your I.T. department has been doing its job the last several years – staying up with updates, refreshing machines on a regular schedule, mitigating the risks of depending on vendors and staffers – then your company should be able to easily postpone all I.T. initiatives in a financial emergency. You should be able to cut staff, defer purchases, and cancel support agreements.
These steps are not ideal. Eventually you’ll have to restart spending on I.T. But in a financial crisis, your I.T. department should be able to save a significant amount of money.