Considering the delicate economic situation in Brazil, it is perfectly natural that all departments within companies are under pressure to cut expenses.
In this scenario, it is natural for IT teams to position themselves strategically in order to help other departments improve their performance without increasing spending. In fact, IDC points out that, by the end of 2016, technology investments are expected to grow 3.3% across Latin America.
That is exactly what we are going to talk about in today’s post. Below, you will see some tips to reduce IT costs and make operations and management more optimized and strategic. Shall we?
Automate operational processes to reduce IT costs
The first major tip we bring is to automate tasks that have a certain degree of repetition so that, while saving time and money, you enhance their quality and reliability.
Basically, by automating IT processes, you eliminate human errors and rework, and you are able to audit and track the steps executed to achieve more accurate diagnoses of potential failures, besides accelerating productivity overall.
Regarding this, a survey by Information Week Analytics found that 89% of professionals in the field see it as fundamental — just to give you an idea of the power of automation to reduce IT costs!
Cut infrastructure expenses with cloud computing
Recently, a study by Gartner pointed out that 70% of the expenses companies have with information technology are related to infrastructure. Therefore, making it smarter and less costly is also a challenge to be overcome. And this is where cloud computing proves to be a great choice.
With it, everything that needs to be done internally on the infrastructure becomes the responsibility of a provider; you only need to pay for the contracted services. Concerns about servers, applications, and hardware are no longer yours — nor are the costs related to them — since you will receive everything in a virtualized, always-updated manner with superior availability compared to traditional setups.
Also take the opportunity to acquire software in the SaaS model, perform cloud storage, use online development platforms, online backup, and other solutions in cloud-based products and services.
Bonus: Complete guide to implementing a Service Desk in your company
Integrate and improve solution availability
We know that a company’s tangle of systems always tends to grow. In this sense, making the solutions “talk to each other” can elevate the quality of services provided by the department, besides helping to reduce IT costs.
At the same time, it is necessary to mitigate downtime related to technical problems, which can reduce productivity both in IT — which has to stop everything to resolve them — and in business operations.
Thus, the integration of solutions helps make processes leaner and provides an environment where users make the most of functionalities. And when they are always available, there is no reason for work interruptions.
Hire a company specialized in intelligent systems
Besides having to hire specialized staff, the duration of a development project can make costs higher than acceptable. Therefore, partnering with a company specialized in intelligent systems can also greatly help to reduce development costs.
A reliable company with expertise in the area can deliver systems in a timely manner at a reasonable cost, in addition to bringing innovations from its background acquired in other projects already executed.
5. Invest in monitoring
Another way to cut IT spending is to work preventively. Investing in infrastructure monitoring and application management solutions and practices can prevent operational problems.
Furthermore, it can also help in preventing information security risks — an IBM study revealed that, in 2015, companies’ average spending on data breaches exceeded 4 million reals!
Therefore, always work with solutions and methods that automate backups, constantly check data traffic, prevent attacks on systems, and continuously evaluate infrastructure resource utilization. The support of a consultancy can greatly assist in this aspect.
Elevate team performance to produce more and better
It is also essential to work toward ensuring the IT team is high-performing. In addition to hiring the best professionals, you need to work on developing them. A 100% motivated and operating team can help decrease waste, propose new solutions to old problems, and, above all, make faster and cheaper deliveries.
Therefore, the more productive and innovative your team is, the easier it will be to reduce costs and elevate the department’s results — do this by creating performance indicators and evaluating them constantly.
As a manager, work on your leadership practices to adapt to the new behaviors of professionals at work. With good talent management, you will be able to make people work harder and better, and avoid having to make new hires — as well as turnover, which is so common in IT.
Strengthen the culture of a consultative and proactive IT
Another way to reduce IT costs is to strengthen the culture of a strategic IT within the company — one that is not seen merely as support. This is because when IT is viewed as a solution generator, it stops being a cost generator and starts delivering resources.
Often, by not understanding the true value of IT, business executives fail to support projects aimed at department optimization. Therefore, with the culture of strategic IT strengthened, you will have more negotiating power when hiring staff, acquiring external solutions and services, and forging partnerships.
And you will achieve this by participating more in the overall business strategy and getting closer to other departments to position IT as a supporter of achieving business objectives and goals. Create metrics and indicators that help measure the results IT delivers to the business, rather than concentrating all your management efforts solely on internal department indicators.
So, did you like these tips? Then take the opportunity to subscribe to our newsletter and receive our articles periodically in your inbox!
