The Real Cost Of IT Done Badly

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The successes and failures of day-to-day work depends much less on the productivity of the individual employee, nowadays, and a lot more on the tech tools they have at hand. Businesses that go “bare bones” with their IT often find themselves paying the cost for not investing in more effective, efficient solutions. Here, we’re going to look at where that cost can come from.

Time lost to tech troubles

You think you might be saving money by refusing to invest in new technology equipment for your team, but that’s not likely to be the case. The older a machine and the more wear and tear it has suffered, the more likely it is to lag, freeze, or break down entirely. Not only will you eventually have to end up paying to replace it, but you’re also paying for the hours lost to downtime over the year. Not only are you paying in the money you’re paying an employee that is no longer able to work, you’re paying in the frustration that will build amongst the team, too.

Overpaid and underworked staff

Solid IT support is needed for teams of all sizes. If they’re using digital technology, they need support to help streamline the systems, fix the problems that pop up, and build infrastructure that makes for better resource sharing and communication. But if you don’t have a large enough team, hiring a team in-house can cost you a lot more. Firms like this IT consulting company called Mustard IT help improve your ROI due to their as-you-need-it services. By hiring in-house, you could be paying more to employ a person (or people) who spend the majority of the day not working, simply because they’re not needed (until they are), while outsourced IT services cost less in order to be there when you need them but to not drain your finances when you don’t.

Losing a lot more than your data

If you look at some of the biggest data breaches of 2024, a common recurring theme is how much trouble the businesses got into following those breaches. Not only does it cost money to plug up the hole, but it costs the trust of your customer base, and potentially legal fees if you were found to be negligent in protecting customer data. Most businesses that suffer a breach go down within 2 years, so security is not something to skimp on.

Take out the tech you don’t need

Just as bad as paying too little for the tools you do need is paying too much for the tools you don’t need (as much). If they are not critical to the most common work processes of the team, instead of signing up for expensive enterprise packages, you should look at using more free and open-source software to help reduce the costs, that you can then invest into better software tools for those processes that matter most.

If you want to make sure that you’re getting a good ROI out of your tech investments, you need to look at what your team needs specifically from the tools that they’re provided. Whether it’s the infrastructure to support a larger team, or the outsourced support to ensure you don’t have to hire overworked and underpaid employees.

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