Maximizing IT budgets to achieve better business outcomes

According to global analyst firm Gartner, global spending on IT products and services is forecast to hit $3.5 trillion in 2015. Spending on IT is an initiative undertaken not just by CIOs, but by CMOs and other line of business managers that need solutions to drive growth. More and more, technology has become linked to business outcomes, and this has inadvertently led to the uptick in IT purchasing.

It has never been more important for IT professionals to gain control of budgets and think of new ways to help their organizations make more informed decisions, especially when it comes to allocating budget resources. Here are four tips on how IT professionals can maximize their budgets to achieve business ends:

Build a 'budget' cheer squad in other departments

As software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings continue to eclipse network-based applications for marketing, sales and finance executives, these departments are quickly becoming key influencers in the IT budget conversation. While all lines of business are chewing up more and more of the IT budget, it’s most apparent in marketing, with Gartner famously predicting that CMOs will spend more on IT than CIOs by 2017.

In the first instance, it is important for the IT administrator to work with the senior management team to better understand the big plans on the horizon that can affect the organization’s overall IT strategy. It should be the role of the IT administrator to then educate the senior management on the value of the proposed investment and the potential ROI.

Don’t spend on hardware you don’t need

According to Forrester, businesses are expected to spend more on hardware infrastructure this year, making up 16 percent of the average IT budget. The increase has primarily been driven by the growth of BYOD and mobility in the workplace. Specifically, many organizations are buying tablets and smartphones to keep up with employee demand for the latest and greatest technology.

While the need to keep employees happy is a legitimate one, these types of programs are often fraught with waste. IT would be wise to point out the number of unused workstations and tablets from the previous round of spending the next time employees ask about an upgrade.

Read the fine print

Today’s vendors are big on promises. The next big thing in software always promises the moon, but organizations should to their best make sure they are getting what they pay for when it comes to services. To ensure this, an organization should monitor data, which includes bandwidth speeds, data transfer history, equipment and SaaS uptime. These can then be used to make sure that guarantees and service level agreements (SLAs) are being met -- if agreements are not met, IT needs to step in and ask for a discount or shop for a new solution.

Maximize bandwidth

Organizations should always ensure bandwidth is being used properly before making a decision to increase their plan with their service provider, especially in remote locations that rely on expensive satellite or leased line connections, and use WAN acceleration or VPNs. Flow monitoring can help in identifying peak usage, as well as unusual usage, which include misuse or where changes in behavior can lead to reduced usage.

There are certainly other ways to stretch the IT budget, but these four serve as excellent starting points to maximizing every dollar spent. But, developing an IT budgeting plan that fits employee and financial needs is a complex process that is dramatically improved by communication between IT, finance and line of business managers. Whether that communication takes place face to face or over some fancy, expensive unified collaboration software, it’s up to you to decide.

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Christian Twardawa is Chief Operating Officer at Paessler AG, a provider of network monitoring software based in Nuremberg, Germany.