5 Tips for Saving Money on Technology and IT Services

Saving a little on your technology can go a long way, but cutting too many corners can lead to additional problems and expensive downtime. Knowing where to make cuts while simultaneously optimizing your technology is a skill that can be achieved with a little bit of guidance. Here are a few ways you can cut costs and improve your environment without creating long term issues. 

Establish IT Standards and Tech Stack

Standardization can often be a bone of contention with clients. They want innovation and flexibility. Standardizing IT solutions for small and medium business, makes them feel as if they are settling for something less than stellar.

What many businesses fail to realize, however, is that standardized IT solutions, can create innovation, save time, and save money, all of which are particularly important to small businessses who often need to maximize limited resources.

As a trusted local managed IT services provider, Centre consultants proactively recommend standardized IT solutions aligned to our tech stack methodology (C-Stack™). We know that these solutions offer local small businesses exactly what they need: Financial efficiency along with high quality results.

Standardized IT solutions for small and medium business maximize employee productivity.

Standardizing IT solutions for small and medium business can save you money by streamlining processes you use all the time. Streamlining these processes eliminates less efficient ways of achieving the same goal.

In addition, using standardized solutions prevents time wasted by employees who are looking for the right way to accomplish a goal. Without standardized processes, employees have to come up with their own approaches using time they could be spending on other projects.

As a result, these IT solutions for small and medium business maximize employees’ time. With standardized practices, employees have more time to devote to other aspects of their job, which leads to greater productivity and cost savings for your business.

Standardized saves time on problem resolution.

In addition, standardized IT solutions for small and medium business also minimize the amount of time it takes to resolve problems. For example, a standardized approach to dealing with IT helpdesk tickets means that everyone who submits a ticket receives a resolution in the shortest possible amount of time.

The result? Happier customers who receive stellar customer service and happier employees who can more quickly return to the tasks at hand. Satisfied customers and happy employees lead to more business and more productivity. That translates into more money for your company. Speedy problem resolution is a profitable way to go.

Replace Hardware or Move to Virtual Desktops

Got an older PC that's causing you a lot of issues? Older technology is typically more expensive to run, and after a while, it's cheaper to simply buy a new desktop than it is to continue pouring money into something that always seems broken. It's a great time to buy workstations, and if things are tight you can even buy refurbished desktops to keep costs low.

Replacing your hardware would allow you to eliminate current issues, but it would require more time-consuming upkeep. At some point, you may also have to replace the replacements. If you'd rather find a solution that doesn't eventually lead to the same problems you attempted to solve in the first place, consider moving to Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI). VDI extends the life of aging desktops and laptops while storing all data in the cloud. This makes maintenance a much easier process with no interruptions to your business.

Virtual infrastructure solutions reduce costs for small business.

Virtualizing desktops and servers not only helps you to maximize the profits you earn from your business. They can also save you on expenses. For example, if a process lacks standardization, then a new solution may need to be researched and implemented every time. Each solution may require new purchases, or new technology which may or may not be utilized the next time a problem presents itself.

In addition, the process of finding and implementing solutions can be time-consuming. This is time you pay for that could have been spent in other, more productive pursuits. When you standardize IT solutions for small and medium business, however, you eliminate these unnecessary expenses. You know what you need to address specific problems and which processes to follow. As a result, you enjoy a way to resolve issues as quickly and as inexpensively as possible.

Enforce Energy Efficiency

If you reduce the amount of energy your technology uses each day, your utility bill from the electric company will decrease as well. Switching to LCD monitors (if you are still using old CRT dinosaurs), and enforcing company-wide policies to turn off monitors or put workstations to sleep at night can make a big difference.

It can seem overwhelming to find a good way to increase energy efficiency in the midst of ever-growing demands from networks, including high device density, bandwidth-intensive applications, and numerous sources of interference. Sustainability depends on finding the right solutions for your specific business and ensuring they are implemented on a network strong enough to support them for your specific environment. 

Stop Dealing with IT Manufacturers

You hired your employees to work, not sit on the phone with a PC manufacturer because your hard drive crashed. Businesses waste money by paying employees to go around in circles with vendor tech support all the time. IT companies like Centre Technologies build relationships with manufacturers and vendors that enable businesses to get things done faster. Issues get resolved quickly and your employees don't need to deal with less-than-helpful support.

Centre holds some of the highest partnership levels for enterprise-grade technology solutions. Our IT consultants are also able to escalate manufacturer support requests. This means less time is spent trying to solve the issue and more time is spent focusing on your business. Centre has curated technology standards that not only implement technology solutions with best practices from the manufacturer, but holistic best practices to ensure configurations are optimized for the overall environment.

Enterprise experience improves quality over the long-term.

Finding adequate IT solutions for small business includes focusing on quality. Inefficient, costly, complicated, or time consuming solutions will do little to meet these businesses’ needs or help them reach their goals. When solutions are not standardized or enterprise-grade, however, you run the risk of implementing solutions that are subpar. One person’s preferred solution, for example, may simply not be the best possible solution for your business.

However, standardized IT solutions built for small business, but have enterprise scale, are often the best ones out there. They have proven themselves to be cost effective and reliable over the long-term. As a result, the business can confidently use them over and over to resolve problems and streamline processes.

Improved quality means that you enjoy IT solutions for your small and medium business that deliver the highest possible quality for the lowest possible price.

Stop Paying your Phone Bill

Yes, you heard us right. Cease paying your phone company by switching over to a VoIP solution instead — or better yet, a cloud-based service like Microsoft Teams Phone Voice and Video Calling with Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS). Small businesses save up to 75% on their telephone communication expenses switching away from traditional phone services, so the investment pays for itself quickly. Many UCaaS systems allow employees to use their office phone number and forward it to additional devices, giving you increased flexibility and functionality.

As business moves to the cloud, so do the ways we communicate and collaborate. In today's world, employees and businesses thrive when the same application is used across their desktops, laptops, phones, tablets, and other mobile devices making calls, having meetings, sharing files, and chatting easy to manage. Implementing UCaaS is a great way to stay competitive and stay open to the future.

Get Proactive Monitoring and Maintenance

Nearly all day-to-day IT issues can be completely prevented with just a little bit of maintenance. Centre Technologies offers these services to businesses of all sizes, reducing the amount of downtime they experience. Traditional computer support only fixes computer issues when they arise. Sort of like wack-a-mole. Centre Technologies goes above and beyond, providing proactive monitoring, maintenance, and cybersecurity to ensure fewer issues plague your business.

Start saving money and Paving the way to innovation 

Many businesses worry that standardized IT solutions will inhibit innovation. They worry about creating a stale environment where good ideas go to die. The reality, however, is that when standardized, can actually pave the way for exciting and profitable innovation.

The reason that standardization allows for more innovation, not less, is that it removes the time, energy, and mental focus needed to find solutions to the same problems over and over again. Instead, with processes and technologies in place to streamline problem solving, you and your employees have more time and energy to devote to creativity and innovation. Who knows what exciting new changes will come as the result of standardized IT solutions for small and medium business?

When you need IT solutions for small and medium business, think about embracing standardization. It can offer you the chance to save and make money, while delivering solutions that improve your company.

Finding an MSP that tailors their tech solutions to your specific environment and business needs is rare. Especially when one of those business needs is to stick to a certain budget. At Centre, our IT consultants function as an extension of your team. Your goals are our goals and our solutions reflect that. If you'd like to find out what your company is overspending on, and just what solutions would maximize your technology whilst lowering that bill, contact us today!