For businesses to remain competitive in the market, staying digitally updated has become essential. As businesses depend more on technology, IT has surpassed all previous investment priorities for businesses.
An estimated 7.5 percent of revenue is spent on IT overall. Organizations in the United States devote about 8.5 percent of their income to IT, compared to 6 percent for European organizations. The breakdown of IT spending as a percentage of revenue by industry is depicted in the graph below.
IT investment
With such large budgets, organizations are now focusing on cost optimization. Simply put, IT leaders are now concentrating on cost-cutting, which is a challenging process, as we all know.
With this technological paradigm shift, 80% of businesses have embraced digitization intending to transform their operations. However, only 16 percent of larger organizations assert that they have the necessary personnel to complete the task, and only 13 percent of organizations state that they have the necessary procedures.
This leads to the conclusion that most organizations continue to doubt their ability to compete with digital pioneers despite having a solid information system and talent. CEOs are left with the impression that the IT department is expensive. The CIOs continually look for innovative ways to cut costs and eliminate waste to guarantee the highest value-added, but this is easier said than done.
However, some tried-and-true methods can lower IT costs. The same will be covered in the article.
5 Essential Techniques to Cut IT Costs
The majority of IT expenses appear fixed and are presumptively untouchable. A few costs that are not fixed and can be decreased are listed below to dispel this myth.
The team’s behavior will be significantly influenced by the publication of a metric on monthly savings from IT cost-cutting initiatives, motivating them to concentrate on cost-cutting measures.
Techniques for Cutting IT Costs
1. Cut personnel expenses
Personnel costs are the main expense when evaluating IT budgets. Over time, the number of employees at the higher level rises due to both employee and organizational growth, creating a top-heavy department. Simply put, this occurs unintentionally, particularly in IT organizations. To complete the work quickly, the organizations choose to employ experienced workers. This increases the overall cost of IT.
Regular employee layoffs are the general strategy chosen by organizations to reduce department costs. This causes anxiety within the organization, which has detrimental effects. The leaders must also experience the trauma of the layoff.
The organizations can strategically hire people with lower-level employees as replacements unless it is not necessary for an exceptional situation to get around this problem.
The resources can be hired at a lower salary than the current experienced employees by hiring new graduates each year. An additional value proposition is hiring interns for projects.
Using fewer offshore resources can also decrease the cost of personnel. Although it was started as a strategy to cut IT costs, it has since become overused. The other mistake that organizations commit is estimating the savings by basing the total expenditure on offshore prices. For instance, if 30% of the work is outsourced, a similar calculation could be made for the remaining 70% of the work done on-site. The extra expense that might be incurred by bringing the offshore services on board is the travel expense.
2. Subcontract IT personnel and services
Another way to carry out a cost-cutting strategy is to hire employees who have been outsourced. Since the project deliverables determine the cost, many organisations outsource their digitization services. As the organization may experience periods with fewer projects, having a complete in-house force will have higher cost effects. Even though the team is overstaffed at this time because you need to keep them around for a busy period, you are still required to pay the employees’ salaries.
Hiring offshore personnel can save costs in many cases and with caution.
According to a business study, outsourcing IT Consulting Companies in Dallas can help businesses cut their IT costs by 25–40%. Due to their limited IT budgets, 78% of small businesses rely on freelance services to outperform their competitors.
Companies can also cut costs by outsourcing infrastructure services, security as a service, backup as a service, and many other benefits on a pay-per-use basis.
3. Minimize Turnover
Costs associated with hiring and educating a new employee are high. Lower turnover rates are therefore crucial to ensure. The replacement cost could be as much as six to nine months’ worth of the departing employee’s salary.
Start by putting in place a thorough and exacting hiring procedure. This will guarantee that you select the ideal applicant for the desired position and designation. Enhance the workplace culture so that employees look forward to going to work. Respect their contributions and occasionally acknowledge their efforts. A good work-life balance, room for advancement, and a clear learning path are a few strategies for keeping employees motivated.
4. Virtualization.
Virtualization’s fundamental premise is to swap out physical hardware for virtual counterparts. Every application had a dedicated server and test servers in the past. But not every server was utilized to its full potential.
You can significantly reduce hardware costs by segregating these servers with low usage. Companies can even wholly abandon the need for physical servers in favor of virtual servers, saving money on hardware and energy.
5. Use hybrid cloud technology
The most common method of cutting IT costs is cloud storage because companies do not need to invest in hardware, which lowers operating expenses. One of the best ways to cut IT costs is to use cloud storage, which only costs what you use.
Management of cloud operations now encompasses much more. According to studies, 63 percent of businesses will use cloud services more frequently. All businesses that work with managed service providers (MSP) will gain from the services. Eighty percent of the companies that have embraced the cloud strategy claim that it has increased security, productivity, and cost savings.
Cloud computing services have benefited many businesses by reducing IT expenses and increasing productivity. Companies can choose hybrid cloud solutions for increased security by splitting workloads between private and public cloud environments.
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To sum up!
According to estimates, maintenance and services consume three-fourths of the allotted IT budget, leaving one-fourth for innovation. To increase the budget for IT innovation, CIOs must reduce infrastructure costs and develop creative cost-saving strategies.
Your ability to reduce IT costs significantly will be aided by the cost-cutting measures mentioned above. However, successfully implementing these IT cost reduction strategies takes little planning, research, or effort.