In any business, you always need to have a strong focus on your technology. There are many kinds of tech that you will need to use, and knowing how best to approach this is going to be beneficial for your company in so many ways. Of all the things that you might be trying to achieve with regard to your business’ use of tech, one of the most important is that you are not overspending on it.
This can be hard to achieve, but as long as you follow a few key steps, you should find that it can be made a little easier. In this article, we’ll take a look through some of the better ways to save money on your business tech, so you can have a stronger business overall.
Buy Refurbished Items
There is not necessarily any good reason that you have to buy your tech new, and in fact you can save a considerable amount of money by going for refurbished items instead. When it comes to buying laptops, desktops and servers, there is often plenty of opportunity to get quality items without spending as much by simply choosing to buy them refurbished instead. Often, you will be paying around 30% less than the price of a new one, so it’s amazing what a huge saving this can make.
Don’t go thinking that these items will necessarily be lesser, either. In fact, these refurbished items are often simply almost-new items which customers returned just outside of a return policy to the supplier, meaning that they can no longer be sold as new. So you are effectively getting a brand new computer for 70% of the usual price. If you can do this with all of your main tech expenses, you’ll save a huge amount of money.
Outsource Your IT Support
There are definitely noticeable benefits to having your IT support done in-house, but most companies find that it is much better, on the whole, to give it to an outsourced company to deal with. As well as having the right expertise for whatever you need to have done, and being able to achieve it all quickly, an outsourcing IT support team will also always be more affordable than having your own IT team in-house.
This is due to a number of factors: for instance, when you have this kind of team on your side, they are able to proactively find issues that might later become bigger problems, and in the process they will be able to avoid you paying more money later on for bigger repairs. Outsourcing IT also means that you don’t have to host your own servers – which can be one of the pricier parts of any business operation, if you are not careful. So you should definitely think about outsourcing your IT if you don’t do it already. It could be one of the best financial decisions you ever make for the sake of your business’ future.
Host Virtual Meetings
In the past eighteen months, we have all had to change to hosting meetings online, and most of us have been surprised by just how well this actually works. If you are thinking about continuing this trend post-covid, then this could be a great way to improve your financial standing as a business, so it’s definitely something you should think about. When you do this, make sure that you have a specified method – in other words, stick to either Google Meet, Zoom or whatever your preferred choice is. This saves time, which in turn saves you more money in the long run too.
Get Cashback On Unused Data
If you give out smartphones with data plans attached to any of your managerial staff, you have an opportunity here to save some money each month. As we all know, one of the main problems with data plans is that it can be hard to figure out exactly how much you need. Often you will end up having too little, but just as often you have the opposite problem, and you simply can’t use all of the data that you have available for your mobile phones.
If that happens in your business frequently, you might want to consider switching to a SMARTY unused data plan. With one of these smart plans, you can get cashback on any data that you have not used at the end of the month. That means you will no longer feel as though you are overspending on data, and you’ll be able to use as much or as little as you like without having to worry about the financial implication. Whether you have one person with a company phone or fifty, this could save you a huge amount of money in a very short space of time.
Set A Realistic Tech Budget
It would be foolish not to have a specific tech budget, or a portion of your overall budget dedicated to the technology you use. This is one of the first things you should look into if you want to save money on this front. Very often, the simple act of having set a budget means that you are going to get much more into the process of saving money, so it’s something that you shouldn’t overlook – even if it seems very simple and straightforward.
To set your budget, take a look at what you are currently spending, and then work out whether any of it could be reduced or removed altogether. You should also plan for any future tech expenses you might be expecting to come along. Finally, be sure to have some wiggle-room, in case things change, prices inflate, or an emergency crops up that can only be solved through the clever use of technology. As long as you do all that, you are going to find that your tech budget is right and in place – and this will help you to save a lot of money in no time at all.
Take Advantage Of Free Trials & Basic Software
At the start of any business, it can be very tempting to simply splash out on the most expensive proprietary software, as you might think that you really need that in order to do the best work. However, is this really the case? Often, you will find that you can get by on a simpler version of the same kind of software, and this is always going to be a lot more affordable. It’s something that you need to decide carefully on – after all, you might indeed need the expensive version in some cases – but if you think that you can make do with the smaller version, you should really consider doing so.
You can also look into the open source versions of whatever software you need. These tend to be free of charge, and you can also change them as necessary so that they are suitable for your needs. That is going to save you both a huge amount of hassle, and quite a lot of money. At the same time, you might want to think about taking advantage of whatever free trials for software that you might come across. There are always lots of these out there, and that’s a great way to save even more.
Automate Whatever You Can
One of the best uses of tech, and in fact a major reason that we have technology at all, is that it can be used for better automation. To automate something means that it is being carried out entirely, or almost entirely, by machines rather than people, and this is generally regarded as a pretty essential way to run any modern business. If you think you could be automating more in your business, then you should start to do so as soon as possible, and make sure that you are doing it right.
Good automation should be simple and stripped-back, but you should also make sure that you are automating everything that can be automated. If a machine does it better or just as well, then you might want to think about automating it. The more you do this, the more that your tech is actually going to be actively saving your business money, so that is definitely something that you are going to want to think about.
With better automation comes a stronger and more frugal business, so make sure that you are doing this.
Keep Everything Updated
Whatever tech you do have in your business, you are going to need to make sure that you keep it updated at all times, if possible. The more that you keep your tech updated – from software to hardware and beyond – the less it is going to break down and cause you problems later on. That means less money being spent on fixing things up, which is only ever going to be good news for your business’ wallet.
If you can do all that, you are going to be saving a huge amount of money on your tech.