What is a reasonable IT budget?
We currently have 150 staff about half of whom have access to a PC linked by thin-client Citrix to our head office servers. In an ideal world I would like to see every staff member have their own PC however I am concerned about the cost of doing this. We currently have one dedicated ICT officer and are probably spending about £75K this year. Has anyone any thoughts on how much extra it would cost to effectively double our staff access or have any ideas on what is a reasonable annual budget for IT for an organisation our size - £4.5million turnover. I know these questions are difficult to answer but any guidance at all would be welcome.
Dave Collier
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what value do you get from the expenditure? Take the IT away and what extra costs would you incur to support your business (people and manual processes). How much business would you lose as a result? i.e. what is the bottom line impact.
There is nothing magical about IT - it is like any other fixed asset
If you went for 1 per desk what benefits would it generate - what would be the bottom line impact? If your existing kit is productive for say 85% of the time, then would the provision of extra kit add productivity at the same rate, or would productivity drop off.
No one can answer this for you!
You need to evaluate what will be gained
Hi Dave
Being simplistic I would say that you somehow need to evaluate what financial benefit will be gained, in time and efficiency savings, by enabling additional server access.
However another approach is to look at the firm's vehicles in the car park, work out the cost of these to the firm relative to the cost of the extra PC's, and then dare anyone to say that the cost cannot be justified!
Sorry, just one of my hobbyhorses.
Is it safe to assume you're in a professional services organisat
Hello!
(I'll assume you aren't running a vegetable packing firm, where your need for computers will be very different)
We provide consulting services to a number of accounting firms of a similar size to your own, so I have a reasonable idea about this...
It's often said that the IT investment should be around 4% of turnover -just to keep still
But what will the Team be doing with the new computers?
Will they be more efficient?
Will you charge the same for the end product, or will you charge less, as the time taken is less?
Hmmmn...
It's very rare for an accounting firm of your size to have fewer computers than people.
Ever thought about getting a Managed Service Provider involved?
You are obviously thinking about giving everyone access because it will increase productivity and therefore profit.
Running an IT company I can say that there are structured IT Support and Supply packages available our there which means that you can get the productivity you need immediately (if you think this is the case) and spread the budget over 3-5 years.
We have achieved this for many SME type companies who were worried about budged and ROI where IT is concerned.
Like many have commented ROI on IT is a very subjective thing to your company and its use of IT resources. Considering you have already implemented a Citrix type solutiuon you are going in the right direction - where the individual PCs don't cost much but the server and the licensing does.
I hope this helps and if you need to brainstorm on this further then please feel free to write to me at info@hiteishee.co.uk or call me on 08700 119 550.
IT support London
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