How to Cut Your Tech Overheads in Business

As technology has become an increasingly important part of our everyday business needs, it’s simultaneously become increasingly expensive for companies to monitor, update, and run their software and hardware. With overheads a key target for businesses looking to cut their costs and increase operational efficiency, this guide looks at how your business can reduce the costs related to its use of technology.

Read on to discover five ways in which any company can reduce its tech overheads in a holistic review of its business processes.

Software Contracts

All businesses operate with software, and even those seemingly simple programs, like Microsoft Office, come at a price. The same can be said of all of your more complex software packages and suites, whether they’re concerned with automating your customer service, helping your creatives design your brand and your content, or simply processing the large quantities of data that each and every company possesses.

As such, you’ll be dealing with a number of business software contracts that may, on close inspection, be pricier than they need to be. Software is a competitive arena at the present moment, and you may well find a more cost-effective package elsewhere.

Don’t be afraid to highlight this to the companies you currently have deals with: they may reduce your contractual payments as a result of your suggestion that your company is thinking of moving suppliers.

Electricity

Perhaps the most basic element that helps run your technology in-house is the electricity that powers everything from the computers and monitors, right through to your charging sockets and the smart heating you have installed throughout your office. Electricity rates for businesses are infamously high – and they’re able to eat into your profits if you leave this overhead unaddressed.

As such, it’s time to review your energy use and your potential to move suppliers in order to cut your costs. You can compare and find the best business electricity prices at Utility Bidder, where you’ll be able to instantly understand the best players in the utility supply game in your area. From here, you can decide whether to shift your contracts to a new supplier, or attempt to cut down electricity use in your business, hence reducing your current rates.

Smart Applications

Another way to reduce your costs in the workplace is to use what’s known as ‘smart home technology’ in a business setting. As mentioned above, this might include the technology that helps you regulate your company’s heating, or it may include smart helpers, automated ordering systems, and other helpers that can increase the efficiency through which your business operates.

While some smart home technology is inappropriate for the workplace, there’s a large proportion of that technology that can, in fact, serve to reduce your business expenditure dramatically, either by reducing your consumption to what you need, or by limiting the number of human hours spent organizing the workplace that you all exist in from Monday through to Friday.

Hardware Alternatives

Hardware happens to be incredibly expensive as a one-time overhead in your business – but it’s also surprising just how costly it can be to replace computers, update drives, increase server strength, and improve monitors in your business. Your business laptops are one spilled coffee away from needing replacement, while the development of more efficient computing hardware means that you need to update your computers regularly to stay at the cutting edge.

You need to adopt a strategy where this is concerned, focusing primarily on your required outputs and the computing power that you’re going to need to achieve your targets. If you’re running simple software, you may be able to struggle on with decade-old computers, but if you’re looking to run increasingly sophisticated software on your computers, it may be time to make a smart and cost-effective update, in order to increase productivity in your workplace.

IT Staff

Finally, it’s worth bearing in mind the staff that hold your IT systems together and work on your cyber security week-in and week-out. It’s these members of staff that protect your business from malware and can get computers back up and running after they mysteriously crash in the middle of an important piece of work.

Nonetheless, how many staff do you need in your IT team? Would one highly-qualified professional be able to cover your entire company? Should you employ that individual on an on-call basis or part-time? Think about how you’re managing your IT human resources in order to make that final reduction in your overheads each and every month of the year.

There you have it: five ways in which you can reduce your tech overheads in the business setting.

 

Disclosure: This is a collaborative post and the author’s views here do not necessarily reflect those of the blog owner.