In the early days of a business, a few folders on a shared drive or a handful of personal accounts usually get the job done, but as your team grows, so does the "digital friction." You’ve likely felt it: searching for a file you know exists but can't find, or realizing two people have been editing different versions of the same proposal for three hours.

It isn’t rare for business owners to seek out opportunities to trim expenses and cut costs wherever possible. Your security should never be someplace you look… particularly if you hope to ever secure the increasingly crucial business insurance you need.

Now you may be saying, “But my IT is surely good enough.” Unfortunately, that standard isn’t sufficient in the eyes of insurance providers, and as a result, it actually becomes more expensive than having the right technology protections in the first place.

Today’s business technology is like operating in the wild west. It’s expansive, fast-moving, and if you aren’t careful, it can gallop away from you before you even realize it’s gone. Between SaaS sprawl, underutilized hardware, and hidden maintenance fees, many companies are overspending by 20-to-30 percent on their entire technology stack. That’s a lot of money.

It’s time to saddle up and start earning some savings. Today, we wanted to give you a guide of sorts that can help you round up your expenses and bring your technology budget back under control.

Do you know what one of the most frustrating budgetary issues you run into is? One I’ve heard about quite a bit is the rush to spend every allocated cent in the IT budget before these funds are redistributed to other departments.

While the instinct is understandable, we want to reinforce that you should never make IT purchases solely to meet a spending benchmark. Instead, all invested funds should be directed so that you see returns.

Business owners have a lot of duties and responsibilities, and while you can hire a lot of people to cover some of the more stressful ones, it might feel strange to outsource your company’s technology management. You know IT is important, so that’s why you feel like you have to do it yourself, or at least in-house, but in reality, you’re the last person who should be working with your technology—and we’ll explain why.

There’s a specific stress that comes from the disconnect between the money you invest in your business IT and the value that comes back from it. Sure, you know what the money is being spent on… but that’s a far cry from knowing how these investments are shifting the needle.

Let’s discuss the importance of understanding what your IT is telling you and when you need to demand more information… politely, of course.

With cloud computing, your business has access to tools that fundamentally change the way work takes place. Several of the biggest reasons to adopt the cloud include flexibility, efficiency, and scalability. How are you planning to use the cloud to add or remove resources to your business initiatives as needed? Today, we want to share how scalability works and how your business can fully leverage it with the cloud.

As necessary as it is, business technology tends to be expensive, especially when things go wrong. Historically, these costs took the form of capital expenditures, which meant they were inherently expensive and unpredictable by nature.

This is precisely why it is so important to shift your business IT to an operating expense. Let’s explore why this is the case and how to implement this change.

How long has your workstation been in use? How long does it take to boot up, to access your user profile, to load the documents you need to work on?

It can be extremely tempting to put off any investment into new hardware… after all, it still works, doesn’t it? Well, depending on your answers to the above questions, it might not. Don’t fall into the classic trap of relying on hardware that is simply too old to support your needs. It’s more expensive than you’d think.

Many—we’d go so far as to say most, at some times—businesses have a pretty concrete view of the role that their IT plays in operations: cost center, money pit, necessary evil.

Something we’ve realized, however, is that these impressions are simply warning signs that a business’ technology strategy and approach need some attention. Let’s identify three signs that might be all too familiar to you, and address what can be done to change course and help turn your IT into a contributing part of your overall productivity.

Deals are great, aren’t they? Offering some money and getting more than you’d expect in return… It’s the next best thing to free. It’s also really nice to get something fast.

Not so fast, though. As nice as they can make things seem, “cheap” and “quick” aren’t often synonymous with “effective” or “valuable.” In fact, selecting the presumably easy route regarding your business technology can ultimately lead to bigger problems in the form of something called tech debt.

Unfortunately, crises happen, so the only responsible course is preparing your business to deal with them. Let’s walk through what modern crisis management should look like for businesses of all sizes, identifying the steps to address these risks and protect your operations.

If your business wants to save money, you might consider cutting down on printing. Although paper documents have always been important, they can take up a lot of space and be a hassle to manage. This month we discuss how you can lower your printing expenses and organize your documents more easily.

Nowadays, the average business leans pretty heavily on mobile devices to some degree, particularly as they make business productivity—and thereby, competitiveness—more easily attainable. However, this also makes it essential that a business using mobile devices has a means of managing them effectively.

Let’s explore the concept of mobile device management, and discuss some ways that your business can take advantage of it.

Planning your business IT budget is no small task. It requires foresight, strategic thinking, and a keen understanding of technological trends.

We all live in an era of rapid technological change, in a world where conscious spending is more important than ever. This makes IT budgeting more critical than ever. It's not just about cost management, but also about staying competitive and secure.

This article aims to guide you through this complex process.

There is a concept known as the iron triangle that provides a simple framework for project management by outlining the balance between your costs, your available time, and the desired quality of your outcome.

Traditionally, the iron triangle helps illustrate how these factors impact each other. Instead, we wanted to take advantage of the principles of the triangle to explore how beneficial it can be to outsource IT services.

We’ve been getting this question a lot lately, so I wanted to take some time to explain this situation to frustrated and confused business owners.

The issue? Business insurance providers have been starting to ask questions about cybersecurity when it comes time to renew business insurance policies.

In this Q&A, we'll explore why insurance providers are focusing on cybersecurity and how it affects your business insurance. Hopefully this will help guide you in the right direction so you can continue to remain in coverage and avoid higher premiums.

A lot of business owners consider IT to be an expense, a cost of doing business, a necessary evil. This is likely subjective and based on your own experience, but when done correctly, IT is meant to be a profit center for your business.

In this article, we'll explore more than 15 ways modern technology can help make your business more money, from increasing sales and improving customer relations to cutting costs and driving growth.

Part of doing business is understanding certain types of trade-offs related to the decisions you make. Specifically, we want to highlight opportunity cost as it relates to technology. What is the opportunity cost of technology, and why is it an important concept for a business owner to grasp?

Are you paying attention to where you spend your IT dollars and whether or not you are making the most of your budget? It’s important to assess your needs before making any major technological purchase, including the goals, challenges, and pain points you are trying to solve. With the right approach, you can increase the value you get out of your IT—particularly with the following strategies.