Don’t Overlook These 3 Technology Budget Categories
Are you considering all the necessary technology categories when planning your annual budget?
Technology is essential for any modern business, but as budgets get tighter, it’s easy to focus solely on routine services that keep the lights on and not on planning ahead. This could lead you to miss crucial budget categories, leaving you scrambling when unanticipated needs arise.
Keep reading to learn about three critical budget categories — projects, refreshes and accidents/incidents — that are often overlooked and how they can affect your business.
Never ignore these categories
Ensure your business has the resources it needs to thrive by taking the time to budget for the following categories. If they are not already part of your budget plans, you might have to rethink your approach.
Infrastructure Projects
It’s easy for a small business like yours to neglect critical IT projects, such as securing your networks, which leaves you vulnerable to attacks. Hackers can easily access your network if your employees use unsecured Wi-Fi or you aren’t utilizing security products, such as DNS Filtering or EDR applications. This can leave you vulnerable to network compromise, evil twin attacks and exploits. The best way to avoid these incidents is to provide your entire workforce with a secure work setup. This allows employees to connect to a secure network, even while working from home, and protecting your company from potential attacks.
Refreshes
As your company expands, you must ensure your technology infrastructure can keep up. One method is to perform regular technological refreshes. This entails regularly upgrading your hardware and software.
While retaining legacy systems might seem like the easy option, or more fiscally responsible, it can harm employee productivity and your bottom line. If you let your systems age too far, you could be outside the security patch window, leaving your system’s security features outdated and easily exploited. Or the equipment could just die, leaving you scrambling to find not only a solution, but also a way to pay for it!
By regularly upgrading your infrastructure, you can ensure your company is always using the most up-to-date technology. This provides your team with an efficient work setup that allows them to quickly and safely access your company’s network and data.
Accidents or incidents
When it comes to accidents or incidents, cybercriminals are always looking for ways to take advantage of businesses. For example, in the case of a ransomware attack, a cybercriminal may demand a ransom in exchange for the decryption code, which could destroy your bottom line if you aren’t allocating for it.
Without proper backups, you may have to pay a ransom to avoid data loss — and you still might not get your data back! This can be a financial and reputational setback for your business. You can protect yourself against today’s sophisticated threats by investing in the right security solutions, whether it is stopping an attack at your doorstep, regular backups to reduce recovery time, or working with an insurance provider to retain the necessary resources to mitigate and recover from a breach.
Collaborate for success
When you try to cut costs, you might overlook crucial budget categories like the ones discussed above. Collaboration with a Managed Service Provider, like Summit, can help prevent this. We can help you identify areas where you may be overspending/underspending and find more cost-effective solutions.
We can also help keep track of your IT budget and ensure no necessary expenses are overlooked.
To get help with your annual budgeting tasks, or just to see what we can do to help, contact our Sales Team at 443.795.5112. We’d be happy to help you figure it all out!
