3 Ways Your Business is Wasting Money on Technology

Wasting money is a major problem regardless of the kind of business you run. Technology can do a lot to stretch your dollars, but it can also be the cause of waste. This week, we thought we’d identify three ways that your business could be wasting significant money on your IT. 

Unnecessary Hardware

No business would willingly waste money buying technology they don’t think they need. It just doesn’t make a lot of sense. Unfortunately, lots of businesses spend a lot of money on needless technology. One of the biggest expenses we see businesses spending too much money on is their workstations. Now that the business world has changed and a lot of businesses are finding success with remote workforces, it’s becoming evident that not all parts of your workforce use the same computing power.

It’s pretty easy to overspend on a device that is overkill for the task at hand, in the same way that you could end up purchasing devices that are underpowered and make it harder for your staff to work effectively. Before you go out and get workstations for your whole team, consider for a minute what the costs are of doing so. You could avoid a lot of money in hardware costs by scaling back workstations or using cloud-based software that is hosted on external servers and doesn’t require high-octane processing power. 

Redundant Software

If yours is like most businesses, you are always looking for that tool that can help put your employees over the top. Of course, that isn’t a bad strategy to have, but you may be surprised to find that 30 percent of software expenditures are spent on software that is basically unnecessary because the company already has an application in their cache that performs similar functions. That can add up to thousands of dollars per employee per year.

In order to reduce these redundant costs, you should prioritize conducting a yearly software assessment. We understand that cutting software inside a business environment isn’t as easy as saying that you are going to use another application, but having a regular software audit will go a long way towards helping decision makers create a plan that won’t produce as much wasted capital.

Unused Licenses and SaaS Accounts

IT is very much always a work in progress. One way businesses run into technology waste is by having software licenses and cloud accounts that no one in the organization is actively using. Most applications can be bought per month as a service or they can be purchased for a year if your plan is to host the application on servers or workstations. The cloud is a great resource for user software flexibility, but paying the monthly fee for cloud accounts that aren’t going to be used for months at a time is a giant waste of money.

If you choose to host your own software, there’s not much you can do other than audit your software needs when you purchase licenses for the year. With any luck you will have to expand them, but if they are reduced for whatever reason, that money can’t be recouped. That’s why many businesses have begun leaning on cloud-based platforms that have a month-to-month billing cycle. This means that if you need a tool for a short period of time, you don’t have to waste hundreds of dollars buying software for a year. 

Our consultants can walk you through strategies to keep your technology waste to a minimum and ensure that your organization is getting the tools it needs to be successful. Give us a call today at (415) 246-0101 to learn more.