Bob Milliken
Bob Milliken

Nobody wants to spend more than they have to, especially when it comes to those necessary evils like bills, utilities, insurance, and the general costs of keeping things running smoothly. The goal is to provide outstanding enterprise-level solutions for small business prices. Here are four ways to cut long term IT costs.
Granted, most of the time you can’t simply cut costs unless you make a little investment first. It’s the same case when trying to make your home more cost-effective: it usually takes an initial investment or a regular routine to make a difference. For example, improving the insulation and replacing the windows is an expensive endeavour but in the long run can reduce your energy bills. Think of business IT the same way.

Establish Energy Saving Policies
It’s a given that today’s computer equipment is more energy efficient that even just s few years ago, but if you have some older technology still chugging away (CRT monitors, I’m talking about you!), then you are consuming more electricity than you need to be. The difference won’t necessarily be staggering but shaving a few cents a day adds up, and the investment eventually pays for itself. Consider policies that dim monitors after a certain amount of time and shut them off after hours and if you don’t need remote access to your workstations on the weekend, policies can be set up so they are shut down to conserve power.

 Refresh Your Hardware
Time is money. Waiting for your email application to load is money. Those older, slow workstations that you still have floating around are costing your company money because the user that needs to sit at them and try to get their work done is constantly waiting for things to load. Older computers tend to be more expensive to take care of as well. Refreshing your hardware every few years prevents this. We’ve found that in most situations replacing workstations every 3-4 years is the sweet spot for cost effectiveness.

Switch to VoIP
Voice-over-IP phone systems can drastically reduce costs in communication. While the phones may be a little more expensive, voice over IP systems are scalable and extremely feature-rich and offer a lot of benefits on their own. Businesses can save up to 50% compared to traditional phone bills.

Outsource and Manage Your IT
In most cases those annoying day-to-day IT issues can be prevented with just a little regular maintenance. An IT company like Cascadia Systems Group has processes and tools already in place  to streamline this maintenance, and can provide these services for a fraction of what you’d pay an in-house IT guru.

Want to find out how much we can save you on your IT, and how much downtime we can prevent?

Bob Milliken is the president of Cascadia Systems Group. Connect with Bob at TheITguy@CascadiaSystemsGroup.com, or give us a call – 604.270.1730. Your comments are appreciated –ComputerCents@CascadiaSystemsGroup.com