Technology Budget Accurate?
Budgeting for technology is a dicey business, and one that can become more challenging over time. Are you taking all the possibilities into consideration for your next budget cycle?
It never fails: you’ve budgeted to add this nifty new software that you’ve been promising your business team, but then disaster strikes. Either you have an unexpected overrun on another IT project or you’re faced with excessive costs associated with a cyberattack. Either way, the IT budget that you worked so hard on suddenly doesn’t cover everything that you need for the year. Before you go back to your leadership team — yet again — in an attempt to make up the difference, perhaps it’s time to consider a new way of budgeting for your technology solutions. Here are a few of the IT budget-killers that you want to consider as you’re getting ready for next year’s budget approvals.
Cybersecurity Attacks or Data Breaches
While it’s impossible to exactly quantify the cost of a data breach in 2019, experts at the Ponemon Institute estimate that the overall cost to a business is between $1.25 million and $8.19 million. Breaches often cost upwards of $150 per record, a cost that’s risen nearly $10 per record since 2017. There are ways that you can reduce the potential impact of a data breach or cybersecurity incident on your business by investing in proactive automation and technologies or working with active incident response teams to define solutions to common incident types. The ability to quickly react in the event of an incident can dramatically reduce the overall impact and cost to the organization.
Lack of Vendor Support for Key Projects or Programs
Finding that the support contract you thought was set to cover most eventualities has a major gap can cause big problems for IT budgets. Whether this is a new project that suddenly needs additional support or a skills gap caused by a staff member leaving unexpectedly, it’s not unusual for you to need additional support for key programs or projects. It’s nearly impossible to peer into the future and determine when something like this will happen, but adding a comfortable cushion to large projects of up to 30% may help reduce the possibility of overextending your budget.
You’re Basing Budgets on Last Year’s Spending
Business units are notorious for coming up with brilliant — and expensive — ideas that can have a big impact on technology budgets. While sometimes these projects are covered by secondary budgeting processes or capital expenditures, the costs can easily spill over into the main IT budget and cause problems. Working closely with business teams to find the possibilities upfront allows you to be a bit more proactive in terms of creating a spending schedule that is closer to reality for your business. When you base your budgets on last year’s spending, there’s always the possibility that you’re missing some upcoming costs that may not have been communicated to your technology teams.
When you work with the professional managed IT services team at Alvarez Technology Group, you may discover that your budgeting process moves much more smoothly and stretches further throughout the year. This type of shared service allows you to gain access to the enterprise-scale solutions that you need so your business can compete at a price-point that is reasonable for a growing small to mid-size business. Creating a technology budget starts with having a thorough IT roadmap for success that details your scheduled upgrades, any changes to platforms and solutions and the growth or reduction of internal staff. We have decades of experience helping companies match their strategies to their technology investment, and will leverage that information to support your business. Contact us today at (831) 753-7677 to learn how our hassle-free solutions can help your business be successful in the future.
