Reducing Cost of Technology Ownership

Bill Cosby once said, “Fathers are not interested in justice, just quiet.” Unfortunately, many take a similar attitude about technology.

I’ve found that most small and mid-sized businesses are not really aware of the cost of their technology. “As long as it works and everybody is not complaining,” seems to be the mantra.

In my last column, I suggested that managing the overall ownership cost of technology in a business begins with purchasing practices. It is important to buy business-grade machines from top-tier vendors and to keep your equipment as consistent as possible.

While this puts you in position to minimize overall cost of ownership, the bulk of your technology spending exposure will occur after the equipment is put into service.

How is that so? The answer is often overlooked, but lies directly in view most of the time. The labor you pay to take care of the equipment will likely be your largest expense.

It is really pretty simple. The more you have to “touch” the equipment after you put it into service, the more it costs. If you are paying outside labor for support you can figure a minimum of $100 for each “touch.”

At the price of desktop computers today, this means that about five “touches” adds up to the cost of one computer if each “touch” takes no more than an hour.

If you have your own support person on payroll, you can divide their annual salary and benefits by the number of computers you have and see what you are paying.

One business I worked with had 25 desktop machines and three server machines. These were supported by a full time IT person at a fully loaded cost of $55,000 per year – an effective annual support cost of almost $2,000 per machine.

Of course, the justification for this expense was that the support person also supported the business software – which required 3-5 hours per month.

Allowing for five hours a month at $100 an hour, the effective cost of supporting the equipment becomes $1,750 per machine.

So what should a business do to minimize this cost?

The answer is both simple and complex.  Manage your equipment in such a way that you very rarely have to “touch” it.

This begins with the purchasing practices we’ve previously discussed. Following that, managing your environment requires a solid security strategy and infrastructure.

You must have a firewall to protect your network. Your equipment should be “locked down” so that no unwanted software – viruses, malware, spyware – can be downloaded to the machines. If your users can download any software they want from the Internet and install it on their machines you have the potential for trouble.

Virus, malware, and spyware agents are regularly updated to by-pass known defenses. Your security strategy should include robust virus protection software that is updated often.

Along with your solid security strategy, you should have monitoring software installed on all desktops, laptops and servers. Computers watching over computers.

Effective monitoring software automatically provides notification of any issues with the equipment. It allows a technician to access machines remotely – saving the cost of an on-site visit. Any needed security patches or software updates – including virus protection software updates – are applied automatically.

Monitoring software is important both on server machines as well as desktop or laptop machines. Proactive management greatly reduces the need to “touch” equipment. With effective monitoring software, technicians usually only have to sit down in front of a machine when a screwdriver is required.

Most user support questions can be addressed with effective “help desk” phone support. This, combined with the ability to “take over” or see into a user’s machine via monitoring, typically provides quick resolution.

Solid security combined with effective monitoring, remote support and help desk support is a much more cost effective management strategy than on-site support. In the example of 25 desktops and three servers, savings of over 50 percent could be expected.

Unfortunately, most small- and mid-sized businesses make extensive use of on-site support and spend far more than necessary.

Steve Hankins is CEO and co-founder of Accio.US of Springdale, a technology company providing advisory and management services for small to medium-sized businesses. He may be reached at [email protected] and followed on Twitter as @stevehankins or @accious.