Tech Budgeting for Small Businesses

Never static, always changing

Technology is advancing at such a fast speed that regular need assessments are becoming even more important. Whether older systems or software becomes obsolete or newer systems might help expand your service capabilities, your budget will never be static year after year. 

Rather than simply allocating a set amount for your whole technology budget or carrying the previous budget over, it might help to break it down into segments and plan for potential increases in any one of those segments. Here are some ideas about segments to consider in your budget. 

Routine Service and Maintenance 

While service and maintenance might seem obvious, it is really easy to underestimate how these costs can change year to year. If you were to rely on only older software or hardware you are missing out on a lot of the efficiency and cost savings systems that are now on the market. If you don’t conduct routine server maintenance you leave your company vulnerable to attacks by hackers, who constantly work to find new cracks in systems. If you don’t plan in advanced for these types of issues, they can hit you by surprise and wreak havoc on your business. 

Tech Related Projects

Larger scale projects take additional time and money to plan out. You could be planning on setting up new phone systems, or even setting up a secure VPN for remote work capabilities. Maybe you learn about a new workplace management software, or you want to redesign your current web presense. If you plan in advanced for large projects, you don’t need to worry as much when planning the projects themselves. 

Tech Refresh

A technology refresh is the cycle of regularly updating key elements of your IT infrastructure to maximize system performance. Rather than using systems or infrastructure until they are no longer working, companies may choose to set a schedule that they would update or upgrade the infrastructure. This ensures that there are less issues for your staff, customers, or partners to deal with, while also making sure that you are always protected with the latest security features to keep hackers at bay.

Don’t Waste Time Fussing

A lot of these these budget considerations require a considerable amount of thought, research, and expertise to know exactly how much should be budgeted and when they are needed. Unless you are a technology company, chances are you don’t know when the best time to refresh key pieces of infrastructure is, or whether there is a more cost-efficient system you could be using. Luckily these are all items that can be easily managed by having a dedicated technology team. There are a few different ways this team can work. 

In-house

The most common type of technology support is for a company to hire their own technology experts or I.T. team. Usually the large the business, the more experts they have on the team, to make sure that issues are taken care of in a timely order. 

Outsourced

Instead of having your own team, you could hire an I.T. service provider such as us to manage your businesses technology needs. We conduct free consultations to look over your existing solutions and infrastructure and then present you with options on services we feel would benefit your organization. All of the work is quoted and then invoiced, making budgeting easy without needing to worry about salary, benefits, etc.

Hybrid Model

Of course, there is no reason that you can’t do both. If you are a smaller business you can hire an in-house specialist or 2 and have their hours supplemented by an external service provider. You could have your in-house team work on certain systems and hand over the others to the external provider.

The best part about the external sales partner is that they work in the way you need them to, supplementing your in-house talent in a way that is unique to your company’s needs.