Most of us don’t make investments without a good reason, and it’s important to know where your money is going and what you are going to gain from it. Your IT budget is no different.
By establishing a thorough IT Roadmap that falls in line with your budget, you can keep the wheels turning without unexpected surprises.
What is an IT Roadmap?
An IT roadmap is a relatively short-term plan over the next year (or a few years) laying out your IT growth and budget. In fact, for most business owners, you can look at it as your IT budget, as that’s how it often starts out.
Your IT budget needs to account for a broad range of technology expenses, including the purchase of hardware and software, as well as the costs associated with maintaining and supporting it. We’re going to cover this below.
Your IT roadmap is the overall plan of growth for your IT. Are you hiring more staff? They’ll need workstations, desk phones, and software licenses. Are you expanding out and forming a new department? There are new challenges there that technology will have to meet. Is your industry about to pass new regulatory compliance requirements? Your roadmap will have to cover you getting there.
Don’t Look at IT Spending as an Expense
It’s easy to look at your technology budget as just another utility that you have to spend, like a water bill or insurance. However, it’s important to remember why you are using IT in your business in the first place.
40 years ago, when computers were still rare in the workplace, businesses relied on much more manual work for data entry, filing, calculations, reporting, and communication. The entire nature of the computer and IT in general is to make you more efficient and increase productivity. Granted, as we all got used to computers being a part of our daily lives, it was easy to forget about just how much they changed things. Modern-day technology, including software, smart devices, cloud computing, AI, and other innovations, are all continuing to help businesses automate and do more with less. There are costs associated with these innovations, but the idea is that your IT should be a profit center, not an expense.
If your IT is draining your resources but not providing much value, it is likely that something is implemented wrong, or there are other issues that need to be addressed.
What Should Be Covered Under an IT Budget?
We can break down your budget into three categories:
- One-time (Project) Expenses
- Ongoing Expenses
- Support/Mitigation Expenses
One-time project expenses include things like software purchases and implementations, data migrations, new hardware, and consultation fees. It’s important to consider regular upgrade cycles in this. The typical workstation has an average lifespan of 3-4 years, but with proper maintenance and support, you could get a few additional years out of it. Either way, it’s good to plan regular upgrades for all workstations and devices, and if you can enjoy another year or two out of them, consider that a bonus.
Ongoing expenses include software licenses, support agreements, ongoing maintenance, hosting, and other subscriptions. If you have in-house IT staff, then it needs to cover their salaries, promotions, recruiting/acquisition, and benefits. If you rely on outsourced IT providers (like Fuse Technology Group) then their agreements should be accounted for.
Support/mitigation expenses cover the surprises. For most businesses, this just includes having enough of a budget to pad for a bad couple of days. If you want to be more proactive, plan to have some redundancy. Keeping a spare PC or two in a supply closet will prevent an afternoon of productivity-loss for an employee when/if a workstation breaks down.
What Considerations Go Into Building an IT Roadmap?
Beyond your budget, you need to take a look at what the future of your organization will look like. You don’t need to plan too far ahead, but it is a good idea to have a very clear picture of the next year, and a somewhat strong concept of what the following year will look like.
Note your upgrade cycle, and be aware of any upcoming regulatory or compliance requirements that you will need to abide by. It’s also important to regularly audit your network as a whole and understand what your cybersecurity spending should be. If it has been a few years since you have put any thought into your cybersecurity, it’s likely that you have fallen behind.
Consult with your department heads as well—would they benefit from new software or more streamlined solutions? Are there better tools available to them that could increase their output? Remember, this might sound like you are spending more money, and at first, you are. That being said, you should be looking for solutions that will, in time, increase your profits or reduce the time it takes to perform regular tasks, or improve your products and services overall.
Let’s Build Your IT Roadmap Together!
You don’t have to do this alone. Fuse Technology Group can help you make informed decisions with your IT, while remaining within a budget that makes sense for your organization. Get started by calling us today at 248.545.0800.
