Are you considering all the necessary technology categories when planning your annual budget?
Technology is absolutely essential for any modern business, but it’s easy to focus exclusively on routine services that keep the lights on. This could lead you to miss, or at least undervalue, 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 too 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 currently part of your budget plans, we advise that you rethink your approach.
Projects
It’s easy for any small business to neglect critical IT projects, such as securing networks, but it leaves those companies vulnerable to attacks. For instance, hackers can easily infiltrate your network if your employees use unsecured Wi-Fi. Risks associated with free Wi-Fi hotspots include network compromise, evil twin attacks, and exploits. The best way to avoid these incidents is to provide your entire workforce with a secure VPN work setup, which is especially essential if much of your workforce does any work from home. This allows employees to connect to a secure network from anywhere, in turn protecting your company from potential attacks.
Refreshes
As a company expands, they must ensure their 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 is easier and theoretically more fiscally conservative, it can harm employee productivity and the bottom line. And if your security patches are outdated, you may become vulnerable to hackers.
By regularly upgrading your infrastructure, you can ensure your company is always using the most up-to-date technology.
Accidents or incidents
When it comes to accidents or incidents, cybercriminals are always looking for new ways to take advantage of businesses. For example, in the case of a ransomware attack, a cybercriminal may lock you out of your data and demand a ransom to decrypt and return it. Without a proper backup, 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, especially for those in the medical or financial sectors. You can protect yourself against today's sophisticated threats by investing in the right security solutions, as well as frequently backing up your data or using a trusted service that backs it up for you.
Collaborate for success
When you try to cut costs, you might overlook crucial budget categories like the ones discussed above. Collaboration with a managed services provider, like us, can help prevent this. We can help you identify areas where you may be underspending and overspending so we can ensure your company is operating at peak financial efficiency. We can also help keep track of your IT budget and ensure no necessary expenses are overlooked. We regularly meet with our clients to discuss the ways in which they can improve their IT budget, because the success of our company depends on the success of our client partners.
If you have any questions, feel free to call us at 423.578.8000!
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