Steer
Budget and costs
Most firms know what IT costs. Fewer know what it buys. A budget and cost review puts the two side by side, and plans next year from what the review shows.
What your IT spend actually buys.
IT costs arrive from many directions: licences, devices, the internet line, the phone system, support, projects. Each is approved on its own, and the total is rarely looked at as one. The review lays it out line by line: what you pay, what it buys, who uses it, and what it would cost to do otherwise. From that comes next year’s budget, with the replacements and renewals already in it, so the money is there before the step is due. Where we also run your IT, the lines come from our own records, not from an estimate.
How it’s done
Line by line, from your own records.
A review is only as good as its facts. These are the ones we work from.
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Licences sized to your people
Every licence against the person who uses it. Licences nobody uses, duplicates and plans that are richer than the work needs are named, with what sizing them to reality would save.
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Devices with a date
Every laptop, workstation and server with its age. What reaches the end of its life next year goes into the budget now, so a replacement is planned, not forced.
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Contracts and their renewal dates
Internet, phone system, software, support: each contract with what it costs, when it renews and what notice it needs, so a renewal is a decision rather than a surprise.
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Requests that cost you time
Where we run your IT, we see which requests keep coming back. Each one has a cause, and the cause often has a price: the replacement that ends it goes on the table with what it costs.
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Options, with what they cost
Where there’s a choice, you get the realistic options side by side, each with its cost, and our recommendation. Saving where it doesn’t hurt, investing where it earns its keep.
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Next year’s budget
The review ends in a budget for the coming year: the frame for running your IT, the replacements and renewals, and the projects on the roadmap, each with an owner and a date.
On record
On the decision paper.
- Your IT costs, line by line: what each buys and who uses it
- The licences sized to the people you have, and what changed
- The devices and contracts due next year, with their dates
- The options considered, their costs and the decision taken
- Next year’s budget, with an owner and a date for each step
Written so that your management can read it without us in the room.
What usually goes wrong without it.
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Licences for people who left
Licences are added when someone joins and rarely removed when they leave. The gap between the licences you pay for and the people you have grows quietly, year after year.
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The replacement decided on the day it fails
A server or a laptop that dies is replaced at whatever it costs that week, often with whatever is in stock. Planned a year ahead, the same replacement is a choice.
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A renewal that renews itself
A contract with automatic renewal and a long notice period renews before anyone reads it. The review puts the date on the calendar before it passes.
Also under Steer
- IT roadmap A 12- to 24-month plan tied to your projects, people and growth, reviewed regularly.
- Risk report What’s protected, what’s open and what it costs to close, in plain language for management.
- Vendor and contract reviews A second opinion on software, telecoms and support contracts before you sign or renew.
- IT planning for deals What a merger, carve-out or new entity means for IT, planned before the legal date.
- The incident rehearsal Your incident plan walked through with leadership before it’s needed: who decides, who tells whom.
Questions we get
Can you review our costs if you don’t run our IT?
Yes. We work from your invoices, contracts and licence overview, and from a look at your tenant with your permission. When we also run your IT, the review draws on our own records and is more precise.
Do you earn from the licences you recommend?
Where you buy Microsoft licences through us, we size them to the people you actually have, and the review shows every licence and who uses it. Fewer licences for you means less for us as well; the review is written to be checked.
How often should the budget be reviewed?
Once a year in full, before your firm’s budget is set. In between, your steering meeting picks it up whenever something changes: a hire, a new site, a contract coming up for renewal.
Will the review tell us to spend more?
Sometimes, and it says why. Where a device is holding your people up or a risk is open, the paper shows what closing it costs and what leaving it open costs, and makes a recommendation. The decision is yours.
Start
What does your IT spend buy?
In a first call we go through where your IT costs come from today, what you already suspect is unused, and what a review would put on the table.
- No first level
- No surprises
- Pilot before you buy