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When properly prepared, an IT budget can assist leaders like you in using the budgeting process to facilitate communication and planning. The budget serves as the foundation for the company’s operations. It provides the resources required for year-round planning.
As a Virtual IT Director, it’s my job to set the strategic direction for our clients to achieve their goals. A large part of that includes designing an IT budget to help spread costs and align technology with needs.
In this blog, I’ll be sharing how we keep our clients on budget when it comes to their technology spend.
IT Budget Planning Process
There is much to contemplate when creating an IT budget. It’s essential to pay attention to every detail from start to finish!
At Netitude, our planning process starts with a discovery audit of your entire IT infrastructure. An audit allows our Technical Alignment Managers (TAMs) to see where your business stands and highlight gaps.
Your TAM and Virtual IT Director (vITD) work to learn everything there is to know about your business. Together, we identify your current struggles, inefficiencies, risks and goals for the company.
Then your vITD builds a strategic roadmap to align your business technology with needs and goals and boost security. Of course, your IT budget is a big part of your roadmap, but how do they work together?
Why Are Roadmaps Crucial for Budgeting?
Creating an IT roadmap is crucial for managing your organisation’s technology projects and budget. It provides a plan for your technology initiatives over a certain period, typically one to three years or more.
Our roadmaps offer a structured plan for deploying, maintaining, and evolving IT systems and solutions. Here’s how our IT roadmaps are essential for effective IT budgeting tracking:
Alignment with Business Strategy
We develop IT roadmaps based on your organisation’s business goals and strategies. We ensure that technology investments are directly linked to your company’s objectives, which in turn helps prioritise and justify budget allocations.
For local real-estate giants, downtime was the norm. After an audit of their systems, we identified the issue and designed a roadmap to not only solve it but open the door to new opportunities.
“We had a situation previously where we could lose a server in office, and that meant virtually the whole firm could lose their email traffic. I had people who had to come in, put their computer on, go and make a cup of tea to allow enough time for their PCs to warm up. That’s ridiculous, it’s like a steam engine. Netitude were able to go in, transform some people’s working lives.” - Quintyn Howard-Evans, Senior Managing Partner at Cooper & Tanner.
Long-Term Planning
IT roadmaps provide a forward-looking perspective on the technology landscape. This allows you to plan for the cost implication of adopting new technologies, infrastructure upgrades, and software migrations, which might span several budget cycles.
We also often highlight area’s you can reduce costs and save money! For example, we saved a non-profit £100K a year in unused VoIP licences. As a result, they could positively invest the money in other areas of the business.
Vendor and Contract Management
Roadmaps help predict when contracts for software licenses, hardware leases, and service agreements need renewal. We incorporate these factors into your budget to avoid surprises.
Project Prioritisation
A well-structured IT roadmap categorises projects based on their significance and urgency. This categorisation helps allocate budget resources to high-priority initiatives that will impact your organisation the most.
Flexibility and Adaptation
While roadmaps provide a structured plan, they also offer the flexibility to adapt to changing business conditions and emerging technologies. This adaptability allows us to seize new opportunities and adjust the budget accordingly.
To keep up with the latest technology trends, we are Microsoft Gold Partners and participate in various peer groups and industry institutes. This helps us incorporate the latest trends into our roadmap process.
Stakeholder Buy-In
Having a documented IT roadmap makes gaining buy-in from stakeholders, including business owners, easier. It shows a clear path for technology investments and how they contribute to your organisation’s growth.
“We found the process of working with Netitude very good, in fact, excellent. They have done exactly what they promised; audited our IT infrastructure first and then pointed out the problems and created a plan to remedy it over time. All findings were discussed and explained to us through a truly collaborative approach and in layman's terms. They are experts in what they do, but they took the time to work with us and fit with our business requirements and financial preference. We found the process very helpful as we knew from experience that a pro-active approach was what we needed.” - Faith Parker, HR Director at B R Hodgson.
Keeping Your Budget On Track
Our mission is to ensure you have the right technology in place at the right time. That’s why, every three months, we conduct infrastructure audits and strategic business reviews to ensure our recommendations are sound and secure.
Your vITD will flag any areas of concern and review your technology roadmap. Together, you’ll discuss upcoming projects, support trends, and security status.
These meetings are an excellent opportunity to adjust your roadmap to reflect any changes in your business. We’re committed to helping you stay ahead of the curve and achieve success!
At Netitude, we specialise in maximising human potential through better technology. We have a long-standing track record of efficiently auditing our clients’ IT infrastructure and designing innovative strategies. Our friendly experts can assist you whether you require a one-time IT audit and report to evaluate your business’s current state or regular audits with continuous technical support and strategy. Get in touch today to discuss your business needs!