Save Your Business Money By Optimising Your IT Systems

IT departments are constantly under pressure to keep networks running optimally, cost-effectively, safely and with no interruptions, all of this while staying within budget. However, a thorough IT audit is a simple way to both optimise IT operations and save costs for the overall business.

What is an IT Audit?

An IT audit involves a full background check of a company’s existing IT infrastructure, hardware, and software. This enables the company that performs the IT audit to establish exactly what IT infrastructure is present, missing or needed.

Optimise Business Costs Using an IT Audit

An IT audit will allow a business to identify and leverage the right technology for its operations, streamline services (e.g. bandwidth), and reduce waste (software, storage, licensing, data centre space) and duplication.

Although duplication can be considered unnecessary in some instances, the installation of redundancy around certain IT processes is essential to prevent or recover from the failure of a specific component or system. This is achieved by purposefully implementing very specific duplicate services.

If companies haven’t yet created a shared-service organisation for some or all of their IT services, then they are doing themselves a disservice. This type of cloud-hosted software lowers upfront cost, provides companies with the ability to quickly up or downscale the number of licenses required for users and provides access to instant upgrades.

Another way companies can optimise IT costs is by virtualizing their servers using either a multi-cloud or hybrid cloud structure, which is hosted off-site, reducing the need for a server room and expensive equipment. Cloud applications also allow for a significant degree of automation of computers and other technology, saving costs on additional human resources.

By now, all businesses should be using VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol), also called IP telephony, a method and group of technologies for the delivery of voice communications and multimedia sessions over Internet Protocol networks, such as the Internet. This cost-effective service allows affordable voice calls to be made to any telephone number using an existing internet connection.

Desktop support for assistance with daily IT issues and advanced functionality can be outsourced quite affordably. Westech, a company that provides a comprehensive range of IT support services, provides both on-site IT support or remote IT support through their dedicated IT Support App, which allows users to quickly and easily obtain the help needed to resolve their query.

Through further optimisation of equipment, companies can realise other significant cost savings. This can be managed through a Service Level Agreements (SLA) with a reliable IT service provider, which will include, among other benefits:

• Extending the life of equipment through preventative maintenance.
• Minimising equipment downtime.
• Reducing breakdowns.
• Providing protection from viruses, malware and other cybersecurity threats

Although some of these steps may be easy to implement, some may not. With professional advice from an experienced IT company, all these steps can be gradually inserted into a work routine, and the cost savings experienced over a period of time which positively impacts on the initial return on investment.