Somehow, December is upon us yet again, which can only mean one thing: a lot of businesses out there are currently trying to figure out how to hit the ground running as we move into 2020 in just a few short weeks.

Not too long ago, I sat down with a fairly new client of ours for a lunch meeting and we were discussing this very process. As someone who has been in this business for many years, it’s something I’m going through right now myself – so it was nice to commiserate with someone about all of it for an hour over a delicious meal.

But when the topic turned to budgeting, this client said something to me that I’d like to take some time to discuss with all of you today. He told me that the 2020 budgets for nearly all of his departments were accounted for, with the sole exception of IT. He said he didn’t really “see the need” to put too much thought in it because he saw IT as a way to “maintain the status quo,” so to speak. Other areas of the business were responsible for growth and innovation, so he’d rather focus his attention on those elements instead. He’d figure out his IT budget as he went along next year.

While he’s certainly entitled to his opinion… it is MY opinion that he is dead wrong. Because IT budgeting isn’t just critical to the health and well-being of your technology infrastructure. It’s absolutely critical to your firm’s long-term success for three major reasons that I’d love to take the opportunity to explore.

The Genesis of Identification and Execution

For most businesses, the major advantage of a thorough, proactive IT budget ultimately comes down to the fact that it puts them in a far better position to not only identify critical IT initiatives, but to execute and act on them as well.

Think about it like this: when properly constructed, your IT infrastructure should always be pushing your business further down the line towards your eventual goals. But at the same time, those goals are always evolving – which means that your technology needs to evolve right along with it.

By taking the time to understand where you’re trying to go, you can make sure that you have the IT initiatives that will be required to actually get you there. You’ll also guarantee that you have the funds necessary to make those initiatives happen, too.

Cutting Through the Noise

Another one of the major challenges that many businesses face throughout the year when it comes to IT ultimately comes down to those spur-of-the-moment requests that “seem like a good idea at the time” but that ultimately don’t amount to very much at all.

We’ve all made the mistake of trusting our gut when we really should have trusted our brain. We spend money that generates little in return and, suddenly, there are fewer funds available to go to those projects that really need them.

Proper IT budgeting helps to eliminate all of this, allowing you to act on only the most tangible (and accurate) information all year long. You don’t have to worry about those spur-of-the-moment requests and justifications for IT expenditures any longer because they won’t have to be made in the first place.

The Power of Visibility

Finally, proper IT budgeting is also a great way to avoid falling into the trap of overspending on certain areas during the year.

Everyone has dealt with unneeded software licenses that eat up valuable funds, or paying for support for an older app or tool that can easily be replaced with something bigger, better and more modern.

When you put in the time to create a proper IT budget, you go a long way towards quickly identifying all of these issues – allowing you to deftly avoid them altogether.

So from that perspective, IT budgeting isn’t just about insight – it’s about better and more informed ACTION, too.

Never forget that as a business leader, you’re making countless important decisions on a daily basis. But unless those decisions are based on actionable intelligence and insightful analysis, you can never be truly confident that you’re making exactly the right move at exactly the right time.

Your IT infrastructure is critical to your firm’s success, which means that your IT budgeting is critical, too. Without the second element, it’s almost impossible to account for the first – which means that accomplishing your goals as we move into 2020 becomes far, far more difficult than you realize.

Ready to Create the Right IT Budget?

If you're ready to create the right IT budget that your own business needs to thrive in the new year, terrific - there's a solid chance that we'll be able to help. Please contact either myself or a colleague at Frontier Solutions today for your free introductory phone call. It'll put us in an excellent position to make sure our organizations are a good fit for one another, thus allowing us to to help address all of your IT budgeting needs and more.

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Chantale Benoit

Chantale Benoit is the CEO of Frontier Solutions, a Calgary IT support company that has been helping small businesses get the most from IT in a way that allows it to drive their business forward for the past 23 years. Learn more about Chantale and Frontier Solutions here.