Business Technology Money Saving Tips

To run a successful business, you must ensure your costs are under control. The costs of the software tools and systems you need to support your business are no different. Even trying just one or two of the below tips could translate into immediate savings for your bottom line.

Tips for Better Purchasing

1. Ask for a discount from your software vendor. You can't save money for your business if you don't ask. Even a 5% discount can add up.


2. Use open source and free products. There is often an open source equivalent for most products on the market. Look out for operating systems (Linux), Productivity Suites (OpenOffice), Reporting (Pentaho, Jasper), Document Management (Alfresco), etc. These tools often have 90-100% of the features of comparable commercial solutions, but at a fraction of the cost.


3. Use web-based tools with a low or free per user or per usage pricing. Some of these tools are free (such as spreadsheet and word processing applications from Google Apps). For some you pay a small subscription fee (such as BaseCamp for Project Management).


4. Volume licensing can provide quite dramatic savings. Generally, don't buy software individually if you have more than 5 computers to buy for. Its worth talking to software vendors about your business growth plans and savings potential for bulk purchases.


5. Pay only for what you need: understand for what purpose your staff are using a particular software package. When you think about it, not all users in your company are necessarily power users who need the top-of-the-range version. Get the Premier or Pro version for power users and the Standard version for everyone else.

Tips for Reducing the Total Cost of Ownership

1. Get expert, independent advice when choosing a software solution or having software custom built. Sometimes the cheapest solution isn't always the best, and may cost you significantly more in the medium term as an incorrect or flawed solution may need to be re-worked at cost.


2. Evaluate Hosted solutions for your software. Hosted software solutions are accessed from within your company but are run on servers at your IT provider's data centre. Your IT provider can spread the cost of the staff who undertake the ongoing patching, upgrading and maintenance of servers across all of their clients.


3. Specialise: a specialist in a particular field of IT is often 2-10 times more effective than a generalist. For some products or business systems; even at high-end rates, an expert may be more cost-effective as you are not paying for a generalist's learning curve.


4. Use a Content Management System (CMS) if you have text, features or ads which regularly change on your website. For example; you shouldn't be paying for web-developer time to add new products to catalogues, release company news, or add newsletters and blogs.


5. Backup your data. Do it regularly and do it off-site. Having data backed up means your business will survive even if your computers or business premises do not. A forensic recovery of your business data off a damaged hard drive can be up to 10-20 times the cost of replacing the hard drive itself. Remember a mantra we use here at Dedication Group: hard drives are cheap; data is expensive.

Tips for making better Strategic Decisions

1. HotDesking: not everyone needs a desk all the time. This is a great option if it makes sense for your business to have a more flexible (part-time or shift-based) workforce.


2. Do you really need custom-built software? It is worth considering changing your business processes to suit the software, not the other way around. Custom software provides the most benefit for the cost of development when it contributes to your business' core strategic offering.


3. Run Thin Client solutions. Thin Clients involve having one or more powerful servers and only monitors, mice and keyboards on staff desks. The individual user profiles and files are all stored centrally on the server. Having a full-spec PC on everyone's desk is expensive to purchase, administer and support.


4. Fit for purpose: some software products include non-core features which don't really do the job properly, but are included for marketing purposes only. For example, if you need a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool, get a good one. Not an unrelated product that has only lightweight CRM features. You can source plenty of different good free, open-source and commercial solutions which will meet your exact needs. Dedicated, full-featured solutions often provide productivity gains far outweighing their upfront cost.


5. Prepare an IT Strategy. An IT Strategy helps you plan your IT expenditure to suit your business direction and growth expectations. With an IT Strategy; you benefit from making software and hardware purchases in line with an already established decision-making framework. Often the implications of bad IT decisions are not realised until a significant amount of money has already been spent.

So, what tips do you have for getting the most bang from your IT buck?