Calculating the ROI on your IT investment

When it comes to investments, metrics matter. As an SME owner, the more return-on-investment (ROI) insight you have on your projects, the better. But this doesn’t solely apply to marketing, advertising or HR budgets, it’s very much applicable when looking at your tech infrastructure and wider IT support too.

In fact, to conduct and calculate any cost-to-benefit ratio of outsourced IT help, there are a few key areas to bear in mind…

Taking a look in the proverbial mirror

In order to assess IT ROI effectively, you have to take stock and evaluate the current situation – examining where your business is at, where employee frustrations sit and what desired features are missing.

And this is only possible if you stop to take a breather and survey your existing setup and expenditure – avoiding any knee-jerk reactions such as investing in more and more equipment. It’s only then that you can make informed decisions as to what the best solution is.

We like to think of this phase as a ‘health check’ – a bit like a car’s MOT – that takes a look at the bigger picture and is used as a foundation to build upon, ensuring your strategy is lean on costs and encouraging of staff productivity.

Whether it’s physical hardware, infrastructure, software, managed support, cyber security or telecommunications, every aspect of a firm’s tech needs to be taken into consideration, to uncover – and treat – areas of strength and weakness.

And a 36-point IT audit is a maintenance tool which can help organisations get their digital ducks in a row – supporting decision-makers in getting the best out of their spending.

We’re big believers in ‘plain speaking’ too, so the findings from our audit are comprehensive and free from any technical gobbledegook. That, and the advice we give on the back of the results are always fully aligned with your wider business objectives.

Making ‘tech talk’ a board-level priority

Another crucial way to work out the ROI on your managed IT support is to simply bring it into the boardroom.

It’s no secret that in the past, tech and overall cyber strategy has been siloed from the rest of many businesses’ ‘money chats’ at board level, but over the past couple of years, this has turned on its head – seeing many more SMEs and larger blue chip organisations including all-things IT in wider commercial planning.

After all, knowing what your existing infrastructure is like is one piece of the puzzle, but picturing how it fits into the future of the businesses is one step further in measuring the success of your investment.

Recognising the unforeseen costs

While a broken laptop or expired cybersecurity programme are both arguably more ‘visible’ costs to a business, there are many more ‘hidden’ – and unpredictable – expenses which IT support can protect you from.

And this is a vital consideration during the ROI-calculation process.

From pandemics and power-outages to data breaches and natural disasters, there are a multitude of scenarios which can, ultimately, incur large costs to a company – not only financially but in terms of reputation and data security too.

And while difficult to predict, you should at least have a contingency plan in place, in case the worst happens.

In fact, keeping an eye on these areas is the responsibility of any managed IT support provider worth their salt – allowing you, and your in-house tech teams, to focus on the day job without any tech-related distractions.

As well as having oversight on what’s happening though, IT support, or more specifically IT consultancy helps business owners to gain fresh perspective on a task – as well as having someone in charge of managing projects and upskilling employees where needed.

Essentially, by employing multiple minds to view a problem, you don’t only benefit from one individual’s industry knowledge, but, in Q2Q’s case, over a century of experience from our entire tech family.

As a result, access to all this insight and attention to detail is what equips a company with a truly robust IT infrastructure – with greater efficiency and productivity at its heart – and not one which will still remain standing in the face of a huffing and puffing ‘big, bad wolf’.

But it’s important to remember that a ‘robust’ system doesn’t necessarily mean having the latest, most advanced tech in abundance, it means possessing the equipment you truly need. After all, there’s never a one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to IT.

If you’d like to chat about IT ROI with our friendly team of techsperts, you can catch us on the phone via 01524 581690, or by dropping us an email: [email protected].