Global Cost Cutting: Controlling Your Technology Spend

The World Bank has recently revised its 2024 global growth forecast from 2.7% to 2.4%, indicating a slowdown in economic activity on a global scale. In response to this economic shift, corporate policies across the world are undergoing significant changes. Companies are now prioritizing cost-cutting measures with a clear objective: to proactively safeguard their businesses against the potential impact of an impending recession.

Importance Of Cost Cutting

During times of economic uncertainty, cost-cutting becomes a vital approach for businesses to improve profitability. With a clear focus on minimizing potential damage from future recessions, corporations have begun implementing cost reduction policies globally. One effective means of achieving cost-cutting is through technology integration, which optimizes labor hours and resource utilization.

As technology adoption surges, the task of managing and controlling technology spend presents considerable challenges. While the initial idea of identifying all IT assets, encompassing both software and hardware, within an organization appears straightforward, the actual process becomes progressively intricate, leading us to ask a fundamental question: how can we effectively control this technology spend and minimize its subsequent misuse and wastage?

Identifying Your IT Assets

The initial step is undeniably the most challenging, which involves identifying your company's current software and hardware capacity. Regrettably, this process demands significant effort, as it entails thoroughly examining accounting information, expense claims, and even conducting employee surveys. Nonetheless, this painstaking effort is vital to establish a comprehensive register encompassing all IT costs and exposure within your organization.

The simplest and most immediate step you can take when creating this register is to make sure it is in a format that can be shared across the whole business to avoid duplication of assets, whether that be a SaaS subscription or a screen monitor.

Once you have an early stage version of the register, additional context must be added to each asset. For example, a software subscription could include information such as who is responsible for managing the subscription, who is using it, the structure of the software license, and much more. 

Auditing Your Asset Register

The next step is using the register that you have created and making it impactful for your business. This involves running through the initial register to decide which subscriptions are relevant, how useful they are, and the level of utilization by employees. 

When conducting this thorough review it is a great opportunity to ask all your employees what hardware assets and software subscriptions are missing from the register you have created. This ensures that your creation is accurate when referring to it in the future. 

As should probably be obvious by this stage there are huge benefits from this auditing phase such as consolidating subscriptions meaning that your organization avoids paying for the same functionality. In addition, you can cancel any subscriptions that are no longer used by any employees within the business which would have gone unnoticed without this step-by-step process.

Monitoring Your Costs

The last crucial step involves initiating the straightforward process of monitoring the setup that you have seamlessly integrated into your company. However, it is vital to emphasize the significance of keeping the register up-to-date, as neglecting this task could render it obsolete, leading to outdated information. In such a scenario, restarting from scratch would become necessary, potentially causing inefficiencies, and unnecessary work.

To maintain complete control, we highly recommend assigning ownership to the appropriate individual within your organization. Having someone responsible for managing technology spend ensures accountability and efficient oversight.

Additionally, we encourage regular engagement with your employees through surveys. This proactive approach helps ensure that all information within the register remains up-to-date. By gathering feedback and insights from your workforce, you can promptly add new subscriptions and hardware assets to the register, keeping it accurate and comprehensive. This collaborative effort fosters a culture of transparency and facilitates the success of your cost control initiatives.

Create An Impact With Setyl

Acknowledging that this process may initially seem complicated and labor-intensive, we are delighted to introduce you to Setyl - our innovative automated solution that delivers instant and tangible results.

At Setyl, our sole mission is to help you take charge of your technology spend and eliminate unnecessary costs, precisely the issue you may be facing while reading this blog post! By utilizing our platform, you gain the power to monitor all software subscriptions and asset expenditure on a per-employee basis, granting you complete control over your expenses.

With Setyl's intuitive tool, you'll have a comprehensive spending overview at your fingertips, empowering your organization to master technology spend effectively and efficiently. Join the global trend of successful cost-cutting endeavours with Setyl's unparalleled capabilities. Say goodbye to wasteful expenditure and embrace a new era of cost control excellence.