Smart Spending: Optimize Your Tech Budget for Efficiency & Security

It’s Q3: time for budget preparation and mid-year reporting. It’s the perfect time to evaluate your organization’s spending habits and determine where you could be making more efficient and effective investments.

You’ve probably seen it in your home budget too. Before you know it, each new system, subscription, or app you’ve signed up for has added to your budget. How many months have you paid for 5 streaming platforms and used only one or two of them? How long ago did you sign up for the premium version of your smartwatch app? That feeling when you realize you never cancelled the trial you signed up for in 2015 is visceral. Company tech budgets are no different, and removing unnecessary accounts, subscriptions, and expenses can have a huge impact on your budget and security.

Consolidation Saves You More than Money

When you’ve spent time determining the cost/benefit of each tool in your arsenal, consolidating your systems might seem counterproductive, but the long-term benefits in terms of staff-time savings, operational efficiency, and reduced risk are undeniable. Think about it: when you have disparate systems handling different aspects of your business, you create silos of information and potential gaps in oversight. This can lead to inefficiencies, increased manual effort, and a more difficult time monitoring your operations for safety and security.

According to a report from Zylo in 2024, surveyed businesses collectively wasted $18M in annual software licenses from too many disparate systems and tools in an ecosystem. Not only does this bloat budgets, increase administrative time, and cause version control and data issues, each new platform opens a business up for potential attacks by bad actors.

We think of the adage “if everyone’s in charge, no one is in charge.” When you rely on multiple, disconnected solutions, it’s difficult to get a holistic view of your environment, which can lead to critical gaps in information and security issues. But when you consolidate, you centralize your information and gain a single, trusted source of truth. This empowers your team with better data, more efficient workflows, and the ability to make more informed, data-driven decisions.

Staff Efficiency Gains That Impact Your Bottom Line

Having multiple systems inhibits organizational growth. Consolidated systems automate tedious, time-consuming tasks, freeing up your valuable staff to focus on higher-value activities that drive your business forward. This isn’t just about saving minutes here and there; it translates into hours, even days, of reclaimed productivity each week across your entire organization.

Streamlined Training and Onboarding

When your employees need to learn and navigate multiple, distinct software applications, training becomes complex and time-intensive. New hires often have to rehash processes multiple times, lengthening the runway for them to become effective contributors to your company and wasting your higher-level staff members’ time. Consolidating to fewer, integrated systems simplifies the learning curve and ensures everyone is on the same page about where different types of information should be saved and can be found.

Better Employee Retention and Compliance

Working with an overly complex tech stack is a major pain point for employees in digital environments. When simple tasks are difficult to accomplish, employee frustration can lead to increased staff turnover or underutilization of software. Not only does that mean that some licenses may be a complete waste of money hidden in your budget, employees may be using workarounds for their tasks that are out of compliance with major regulatory bodies and data protection practices, exposing you to risk. In a 2022 study performed by Gartner, disparate platforms contributed to out-of-control spending, averaging $1,040 per employee.

Employees with easy access to the tools and data they need to do their jobs are more likely to properly follow company and compliance processes, and less likely to leave due to frustration with task execution.

Integrated Data for Smarter Decisions

Siloed systems inhibit your ability to easily access and analyze data. Teams waste countless hours attempting to reconcile conflicting information or piece together a complete picture from disparate reports and platforms. A consolidated system means a unified database, ensuring data consistency and accuracy. This means less time spent on data manipulation and more time leveraging accurate, real-time insights to make strategic business decisions, improve customer service, and identify new opportunities.

Reduced IT Overhead, Complexity, and Security Risks

Managing numerous vendors, contracts, and software updates is an IT nightmare, and often, departments may be signing up for apps and integrations without IT support, leading to hidden costs and security risks. Consolidation simplifies your IT infrastructure, reduces the number of points of failure, and often leads to fewer licensing fees and maintenance agreements. This frees up your IT team or managed service provider to focus on innovation rather than just keeping the lights on.

Security is also a critical area of concern with siloed systems, the more systems you’re connected to, the more pathways bad actors can use for an attack. We saw a stark reminder of this recently in a breach due to a targeted spear phishing attack. A click on a malicious link led an employee to unknowingly provide credentials to a bad actor. This resulted in further emails within the company from the compromised account to gain trust with other employees. In the end, there was a large financial impact to this company.

This incident underscores a crucial point: one successful login by a staff member through a malicious link can be all it takes for a bad actor to gain access to your systems. With consolidated systems and better monitoring, this outcome could have been avoided. More features continue to become available for us to protect our systems through streamlined security. Now, instead of paying slightly more for more security, the company is out a significant sum of money and needs to spend the time and effort to determine the cause, repair the breach, and remediate any additional issues. Investing now in robust monitoring and security solutions is not an expense; it’s an insurance policy.

Working on Multiple Platforms Isn’t a Life Hack, It’s Holding You Back

Consolidating your systems is a surefire way to streamline your operations, improve your security, support your staff, and ensure every dollar in your technology budget is contributing to business growth. 

At FIT, we can help you unlock the full potential of a consolidated system to establish a truly comprehensive and secure environment. We partner with Microsoft to provide the best-in-industry systems and security for your tech strategy. If you have questions about our processes or how you can consolidate your tech stack, please don’t hesitate to contact us any time.