I have good news and bad news. Let’s begin with the bad news: to my knowledge, nature has yet to give us a money tree. We’ve all felt the pain of budgeting letdowns. Last month we talked about rallying in the boardroom, trying to get your budget to meet your needs. But, not only is a CFO a hard sell, but in life and in business we often realize that no matter how much money we have, it doesn’t always seem like enough.
Now, for the good news: with careful calculation and creative, deliberate solutions, you can meet your needs within your current budget. It’s not always an easy task, or a fun one. But, it’s something that you can accomplish.
Here are a few tips and tricks for making the best with what you’ve got and finding the money you need where it’s hiding in your budget.
Review your contracts and renegotiate your terms (with vendors and providers)
Did you know that invoices can vary up to 20% per month due to vendor error? That’s a large margin in any capacity, but especially for a CIO trying to work within a set budget in a department with notoriously scarce resources and high demand. Check in with your vendors and take a deliberate and careful eye to your invoicing– better to be sure than to be sorry.
The same goes for the terms of your provider contracts. When was the last time you went over your terms and conditions with a fine tooth comb? You may be due for maintenance, maybe even a full telecom audit, something we at Premier have completed many times with positive results to follow.
By renegotiating your terms and updating your agreements with vendors and providers alike, you are able to reclaim some of your cash and to be even more sure of exactly where each dollar is going, and whether or not it’s supposed to go there at all.
Consider changing vendors
Negotiating is an art, and like any art, it’s subjective. Let’s say that your provider isn’t budging. Luckily for you, there are plenty of options to explore. By switching providers, you begin with a clean slate and the ability to not only choose the best deal, but to further negotiate terms to tailor your needs. The same services you’re utilizing today may be available from a different provider for better rates, better terms, and potentially better service. Premier Team assists our clients with finding the best solutions for their needs, and in figuring out who can help them implement. We have a large professional network and excellent working relationships with many providers– we’d be happy to introduce you.
Employ new technology
In one instance here at Premier, we helped guide a client through the transition from MPLS to SD-Wan. In that case, we saved the client $90,000 a month– around $1 million per year.
We approach budgeting situations with careful audits and gain meticulous understanding of where your money is spent. From there, Premier Team helps to implement efficient solutions with, as you can see, impressive results
Systems that your business has been running for years and years may seem like they are integral to your technology ecosystem, and at the moment, maybe they are. But, these pillar pieces of technology can be exchanged, and with the high rate of change in technology, every day we discover new innovations that help combine, automate, and otherwise simplify processes that could be a money pit for you. Taking a critical look at your operations and determining what is, or should be, obsolete to you can help to keep your business running more efficiently and reduce spend at the same time.
Assess circuit utilization reports
When it comes to saving money, it’s helpful to meet numbers with numbers — what are you spending, and where’s the hard data to justify it within your current budget? Circuit utilization reports are an excellent way to figure that out.
By figuring out your areas of greatest need and measuring them in hard terms with bandwidth data, you can redirect your investments to meet those areas and eschew some of the spending on areas that don’t need it. The data is empirical, a proof positive map for reassessing your technology needs and a great indicator of how to find your solutions.
Reassessing, reinventing, and renegotiating your current operations can be a big undertaking, and we’re here to help. Premier Team will conduct a thorough investigation of your current costs and help you uncover expenses you may not have been considering. We pinpoint the right solution for your unique situation, and narrow down likely providers as candidates for solutions.
From there, we work out the best options from said provider for the company. We know a litany of providers well, and what they offer. We utilize Pathfinder as a tool to vet the right source for your initiative, offering years of industry experience having done side by side comparison—it’s an integral part of our proprietary formula for perfect solutions.
For me, after 22 years of personal experience in working with clients like you, I’ve learned that there are no clients like you– each case and each challenge is unique. Your solutions should be, too, and my team would love to help you stretch your dollars and make them work for you. Contact us to get started.
