Smart Tech Spending
Smart Tech Spending is a podcast designed to help growth-driven businesses and mission-driven nonprofits gauge the success of their technology investments and overcome the challenge of measuring their tech ROI. Hosted by Nicole Lefsky, cofounder and managing member of Jersey IT Group, each episode features an interview with an executive or thought leader discussing topics like: Are you spending too much or not enough when it comes to technology services? How to avoid unplanned tech expenses? What technology drives profitability? This show is ideal for business owners, managing partners, CFO's and office managers who oversee technology spending for their companies.
Smart Tech Spending
How to Gain Control of Rising Tech Costs with Nicole Lefsky
In this episode of Smart Tech Spending, I address the common question, “How can we lower our company's tech costs?” I uncover expenses that are often overlooked when budgeting for technology projects and provide my recommendations for developing a plan that will help you gain better control of your company’s TRUE technology costs.
What you’ll learn in this episode:
- The financial benefits of a technology plan and budget
- The importance of October 14, 2025 and planning ahead
- How to avoid workflow interruptions with computer upgrades
- 7 Cost-saving steps when planning and budgeting for a major computer upgrade
Resources
Contact Nicole: nicole@jerseyitgroup.com
Connect with Nicole: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolelefsky
Jersey IT Group’s Website: https://www.jerseyitgroup.com
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[00:00:00] Nicole Lefsky: By having all technology costs together and mapping out the plan, you will control your costs more and inevitably reduce them.
[00:00:08] Jersey IT Group: You're listening to Smart Tech Spending, a podcast designed to help businesses gauge the success of their technology investments. If you're looking to overcome the challenge of measuring the ROI of technology tools and services, avoid unplanned expenses and uncover hidden costs, you've come to the right place. Let's get into the episode.
[00:00:30] Nicole Lefsky: Welcome to episode five of Smart Tech Spending. I'm Nicole Lefsky and I'm here to share with you a question that I am asked over and over again and that question is, "How can I lower our company's technology costs?" Well, my answer today is, I don't know if you can lower your technology costs per se, but I can tell you that in order to keep technology costs manageable, one piece of advice I give is create a technology budget and plan.
[00:01:04] The plan...the budget - it provides you and your company with an overview of all of your upcoming technology projects, upgrades, changes. It gives you a snapshot of how much you're spending, really spending!
[00:01:20] Because a lot of companies, when I ask them, "How much are you spending?" They give me the cost of the hardware. They give me the cost of the licenses. They never tell me about how much it costs for the project, the professional fees their IT company charged them. How much it impacted their company indirectly, because their employees couldn't work or they were down or the sales department couldn't make calls and they couldn't send emails.
[00:01:43] These are all part of a plan. You want to avoid some of those things from happening, but by having all technology costs together and mapping out the plan, you will control your costs more and inevitably reduce them.
[00:01:57] So a technology plan and budget gives you the ability to also take big investments, in say, hardware and look at spreading them out over time. Some companies opt to make upfront investments when you have to do upgrades like capital investments. They want that immediate expense. They want to be able to make that investment upfront. Others like to amortize it over period of time, whether it's six months, 12 months, 18 months, It gives you the ability to plan.
[00:02:30] I'll give you an example, one that's pertinent to the next 19 months or so. So an important date to know is October 14th, 2025. Why is this important? Because it's the last day that Microsoft will support Windows 10. Technical talk. I know I don't like it, but I have to just allude to it a little bit. So stay with me.
[00:02:54] We're in the end of the first quarter of 2024. So a smart tech spending decision now is to budget and plan for the replacement of computers and laptops running Windows 10 in your office. You might say, "How do I know if I'm running Windows 10 in our office?" Well, if your company hasn't replaced computers in a while, chances are you're running Windows 10. So you should check.
[00:03:18] Now why should you care if you're running windows 10 and need to upgrade? Well, once Microsoft no longer provides what are called security updates and they give a date of when they're providing that until which in this case is October 14th of 2025. Once you don't have those current updates, your computers become more vulnerable to cyberattacks.
[00:03:41] Hackers have tools that scan for and seek out systems that are running old operating systems. It's the low hanging fruit for them. So without current security updates, hackers can more easily gain access to your systems.
[00:03:53] Now, why should you care if your company gets hacked? Because it will cost you money and time, which means more money.
[00:04:03] Also regulatory agencies often require that computers run a currently supported operating system to meet compliance. So, if you're falling under HIPAA in healthcare, if you are a government entity or contractor to a government entity, you will be required for compliance to meet these requirements. And frankly, there's not a company small or large from the home-based, one-person computer to the 250-office computer system environment that I wouldn't say the same advice to. You've got to get the Windows 10 out and the Windows 11 in before that date.
[00:04:45] Now, when you're upgrading your office computers, the benefit of having the plan and the budget is you can say, okay, how are we going to map this out? What's going to work best in our organization? Are we going to amortize the cost? Are we going to plan to do 10 computers a quarter? Two computers a quarter over the next number of quarters up until that date? It gives you the control to say what works best with us financially and operationally. You also don't want to interrupt workflow. Taking old computers down and putting new ones in, even if they've been configured in your IT company's office and they bring them on site, they have to be connected to other devices like printers and copiers, and that takes a little bit of time.
[00:05:27] So people are going to have to be off their computers while replacing the old ones. Take that into consideration when you're doing your plan, how much impact is this going to have?
[00:05:38] So here's what I would do.
[00:05:39] First, I would determine the number of computers and laptops, don't forget the laptops, that are running Windows 10 and need to be replaced.
[00:05:47] Then I'd obtain pricing for the total hardware replacement cost, everything, and then make the decision. Do you want to amortize that cost or do you want to make that investment at one time? And when do you want to make it? Incorporate it into your technology budget and plan.
[00:06:04] Then I'd get an estimate from your IT company what the project fee or professional service fee will be for configuring and implementing the new systems.
[00:06:15] What is their time frame? How much time, how much downtime will your office have? How will that impact you? Discuss those things. Incorporate them into your plan.
[00:06:24] If you're an accounting firm, you're certainly not going to replace computers between January and April, or you may not want to do it when extensions are due closer to October.
[00:06:35] So obviously you want to have the plan reflect the workflow that's appropriate to your organization.
[00:06:40] Then I would generate a budget that works best.
[00:06:44] Final step, work with your IT company - create an installation schedule to avoid interrupting the workflow in your office, whatever that is.
[00:06:52] I hope you find this information helpful.
[00:06:55] Please don't hesitate to reach out to me. You can feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn or email me directly at nicole@jerseyitgroup.com
[00:07:06] Share with me ideas you might have or questions and we would be happy to bring them into a Smart Tech Spending episode.
[00:07:13] Thanks so much for listening.
[00:07:15] Jersey IT Group: You've been listening to Smart Tech Spending hosted by Nicole Lefsky. Make sure you never miss an episode by subscribing in your favorite podcast player. And if you enjoyed this episode, we'd appreciate it if you'd rate and review the show. Thanks for listening.
