Time is always of the essence when needing to cut costs. Afterall, time is money. There is no time like the presence to evaluate what aspect of your IT you can change to see real improvement to the bottom-line. 

Fortunately, certain key technologies and methods for realigning these technologies and services enable you to reap the benefits while reducing the costs. 

To start the assessment of your IT costs, from big picture to details, here are seven considerations on how to quickly reduce your IT spending: 

Eliminate or Reduce “Pay-As-You-Go” – This model for services tends to be a premium expense. Often, these come into play only when something goes wrong. So, in addition to the on-call expense to fix the problem, you have the expense of downtime, new purchase and so forth. Instead, explore the option for contract at a scalable monthly fee reducing the expense overall on an annual basis.    

Focus on “Cash-On-Hand” Decisions – It’s tempting to look for improving the bottom-line through line items such as depreciation or amortization but at the end of the day you still don’t have extra savings in the bank. You will see real improvement by adapting to different means of performing IT services and acquisitions.  

Move to the Cloud – Here is where savings become dramatic. The benefits of accessibility, infrastructure, improved storage, support, and security all combine to five a tremendous reduction in costs. Best of all, removal of the financing of capital expenditures to a monthly operating expense, makes a striking impact to reporting and budgeting.  

Evaluate Contracts and Licenses – Don’t auto-renew if you don’t have to. Due to the current economic conditions, every contract becomes negotiable. Also, switching software to a competitor may lead to a drastic change in licensing costs. As part of assessing costs, analyze the plethora of alternative software and services that may serve you and your business better while costing less.  

Go Local (Move Away from Off-Shore Resources) – This may be a tough sell up the chain of command, but given the world dynamic, cybersecurity, and a questionable world stability, it makes sense. Also, look at the big picture of costs due to time differences, training, language barriers and so forth and not just what appears as viable cheapness. Specifically, local companies are more apt to care about you, your security, and your success.  

Use Less Expensive Hardware – Consider the breakthroughs in technology when it comes to hardware purchases, even down to evaluating the differences among desktops, laptops, intelligent/smart terminals to access the Internet, tablets and BYOD, along with the use of servers and virtual storage in the cloud. 

Engage a Managed IT Service Provider – Here is how you can achieve all the other considerations and more. Moving to a managed service provider helps with all the planning and implementation. They provide their services for a monthly operating expense, provide around the clock support and 24/7/365 monitoring and the most up-to-date cybersecurity measures.