5 IT Mistakes Costing Your Business Money

No business owner likes spending money on IT, it’s a necessary evil. Often, when it’s time for a budget review, IT costs are the first to be cut. Budget cuts are okay, as long as you’re not making cuts that will cost you more in the long run.

1. Buying into unnecessary packaged IT services

When you don’t know the scope of your business’ IT needs, it often makes you more likely to buy into expensive and unnecessary IT packaged services with all the ‘bells and whistles’ that may not be entirely useful for a business in your industry or size.

We recommend starting with the basic or trial version of services you would like to explore so you can see how many of the additional features are actually useful before fully committing. Sometimes these ‘nice to have’ gimmicky features are simply that — just nice to have, but not serving any purpose.

2. Not using technology to its full potential

Similar to the first point, many businesses buy into IT services without learning or exploiting the full potential these services can offer your business. You end up with many different programs from various providers which are not only costly, but a headache to manage.

We always recommend:

a) tapping into the full potential of your existing systems, and

b) researching the scalability of new IT services and products for your current and future needs. A proactive IT provider will try their best to understand your IT goals to find the best IT solution for your business.

3. No clear IT goals or budget

If you don’t have a goal or budget, it’s hard to know what you want, need and what options are available to you. Often business owners jump blindly into purchasing costly IT products as a ‘DIY’ solution, only to pay more later when it’s not fit-for-purpose.

Before you begin, write down the 3 essential IT aspects your business needs, and 3 'nice to have' IT goals you'd like to achieve (but aren't a high priority). Once you know what you need and want, it's easier to explore IT providers' services to find a solution that will achieve the most cost-effective outcome for your business. This also helps you research and determine a realistic budget for your IT needs.

4. Cutting corners with professional IT training

An issue we often see in businesses of all sizes is a large investment in new equipment and software for their staff. It’s on time and within budget, however, they quickly realise they didn’t account for the tangible and intangible costs of professional IT training for their employees. When employees need to learn how to use new systems, a learning curve and disruption to productivity is to be expected.

This can be avoided by being prepared. We recommend factoring the cost of professional IT training and resources for employees and the downtime into your IT budget before spending on new IT infrastructure.

5. Being reactive vs. being proactive

Constantly reacting to IT issues, rather than being proactive, is a costly and time-consuming mistake we see in many businesses. When we’re reacting to IT issues, there is a decrease in productivity, larger disruptions to workflow, and a higher urgency and stress for business owners. By being proactive about your IT needs now and in the future, you can foresee issues that may arise when scaling your business up and down, the safety nets and back-up infrastructure to have in place when things go wrong, and have procedures, policies and support to manage these IT issues.

Working with Incito means you have a team of proactive IT professionals backing your business at all times. We’ll conduct a full audit of your IT infrastructure, get to know your industry and IT needs, and help foresee and fix issues before they impact your business’ day to day workflow.

For simple, cost-effective business IT solutions all managed in one place, get in touch with the Incito team, here.