How You Approach Technology Affects Your Entire Budget

Chances are that when you begin going through your expense reports, one of the most glaring expenses your business has is payroll. It is possibly the most crucial cost you will be subject to. In fact, small businesses need to realize that by hiring employees, a large portion of your operational budget is out the window. To properly grow a business, you may need to take an alternative view to the traditional business model; including your technology management.

Annual Budgeting is a Must
When you set up a budget for your business, you first have to estimate all the expenses you absolutely have to take on in order to operate your business properly. These include:

• Rent/Mortgage
• Insurance
• Procurement costs
• Payroll and requisite taxes
• Marketing and sales
• Utilities (electric, water, Internet, etc.)
• Estimated maintenance costs
• Legal & accounting fees
• Licenses & fees
• Office supplies
• Travel costs
• Interest & depreciation

This may be a daunting task, especially if you are new to business and new to a market. Once you ascertain what it costs to run your business annually, you have to be confident that you have the demand necessary to facilitate taking on these costs. By completing this task, you can attempt to play out different scenarios to get a better grasp on what is possible for your business over the next year. If you want to implement any major change to your business strategy, you’ll want to include it at this stage.

Technology can be a significant expense, when you take into consideration that the costs are represented by several of the variables listed above. Not only do you need to procure the technology systems, but you need to improve the depreciated computing systems, to meet the specifications required to operate efficiently. You also have to consider the costs of IT support, since these systems are notoriously hard to predict. This often results in runaway technology costs that sap both the capital and operational budget.

At Preferred, we provide solutions that can assist your business to ward against those runaway technology and support costs. Our comprehensive managed services offering delivers small and medium-sized businesses the opportunity to get all the technology support they need, for a consistent monthly flat-rate. With our remote monitoring and management solution, we can provide proactive maintenance to the machines attached to your network to ensure they remain reliable. We also make available help desk support and even on-site support for those times when remote support isn’t an option. These managed IT services can be indispensable for a business searching for a way to navigate your technology’s support, without having to pay a premium price.

Managed IT services give you the opportunity to use more of your capital toward the administration of your business (like payroll), and to take on projects to make your business more efficient, without having to worry about the return on investment of your technology. Call us today at 708-781-7110 to learn more about our managed IT services and other technology-related solutions.