I was like driving into where I was going to buy some coffee and I always get in trouble for buying like really expensive coffee.
So is there a thing that when you have that excess money floating around that you spend it on?
You know what I mean?
Like I always got to get the best coffee.
Cheap copy, not for me.
What's the thing that you got to spend that little extra money on?
Oh boy.
I have to get my setbacks for a second and say I support you and I don't think that coffee is an extravagant expense.
I think inflation has made it expensive, but I'm just saying you just deserve it.
It's a requirement.
Okay.
Coffee is probably mine as well.
I worked in a roastery during college and so the snobbery was built right in.
I didn't have a choice and it's continued.
Yeah.
I'll go with a good dessert.
I'll say that.
I think if you get a premium, like even just simplify to say a premium like ice cream or something to that regard that's got some quality to it.
I'll pay extra for that.
Coffee is good, but yeah.
Not to be redundant.
I'll go with the dessert treat category.
I like that coffee dessert and then mine's more of like, I really like purses.
So I would buy like a really fancy purse for me.
But that's great.
Now you're getting to the high end stuff.
I know.
Hey, we didn't miss my how much extra money.
We just said extra money.
That's true.
Which reminds me that books go on this list as well with the amount I have on my to be read list.
Those are also not an extravagance necessity.
Yes.
I don't buy a lot of things.
Hello, my name is Kelsey and I'm a shopaholic.
Yeah.
This is a bad question for Kelsey.
Yeah, I was gonna say, maybe I shouldn't answer that one, but Tara, I know I 100%.
I agree with you.
Well, purses maybe not because I carry everything in my hands like the evolved human that I am with small pockets.
But sweaters living in Minnesota.
If I have extra money, you can never have too many sweaters.
The limit does not exist.
That's awesome.
Cars are pretty good.
Oh yeah.
I thought you were gonna say cars.
Keep going.
Yeah.
Like chocolate for me too.
Good high end chocolate.
Oh, so good.
Well, today on our tech program.
That's all I'm saying.
We're talking about budgets.
We're talking about money.
And we're going to talk a little bit about hopefully how you can use your budget wisely, but something that we think if you ever have a little extra money should be spending an arm, which is your it.
Tara Kelsey and I are joined by Kyle, our president and CEO and Matthew RBC.
So and when it comes to budgeting for it, where, where do you even start?
Where, where do you begin?
I can, I can do that kind of the start and just kind of the general topic side and we run into this with many cases talk to organization is the usually don't have a existing pretense of how much of this.
How much of their, you know, percent of their revenue side of that should really be set aside for technology.
And there's a number of different studies out there.
I mean, industry average on general not non regulated organizations about 3%.
Again, that's just a very standard number side of it.
So again, the month that you set aside could vary depending on the size and revenue of the organization.
You get into health care and other regulatory sides of it.
Matthew can chime in on site if I remember all these numbers, right, but you know, around 7%, 8%, you know, it's a much bigger number.
Just because of the amount of technology for compliance and regulatory reasons side of it.
So you got kind of those general percentage numbers and obviously it'll vary in between the real world that I run into and talking more about organizations.
It's, it's whatever they've been doing in the past, you know, so it's just repeating of the general past.
Or whatever, then they're told that they have to do, you know, whether it's from a regulatory of the, you know, because of the industry again that they're in or of a of a supported vendor or customer of theirs that they are regulated now because they're regulated, you know, they're part of the overall food chain.
As you as you would for for their supplier, our customer that they're trying to work with. So, you know, there's then all of a sudden their budget changes and they're scrambling a little bit because it's it's more of a reactionary spend on those cases.
We would generally advocate, you know, again to get in that proactive side of it to, you know, adhere to just some general planning side of that and planning is usually that that first step to make the spend at least more predictable side of that.
And then at simple level, it's hardware refresh, looking at your workstation servers and component sides and saying, I'm going to replace, you know, typically we'd advocated your workstations would be about a five year use of life as well as your server size of those so just plan one fifth of your workstations be replaced every year.
And then your servers every five years if you have multiple servers stagger, you know, so you don't have it all refresh that one time if possible.
If you're in multiple servers, sometimes you have the actual hardware versus the software virtual servers so there's a little more logistics to it but the general name of the game there is trying to spread the expenditures out but you know they're coming so you can plan in advance.
And you know what your annual subscriptions are and so forth so predictability is a big part of the game to keep the costs in check. So you're not surprised by a $20,000 expenditure that you were planning on that's, that's for sure we try to avoid because those are painful.
Yeah, I mean I everything agree I agree with everything you've said that Carl it's, it's all about, you know, in what have you been spending previously, and why have you been spending it right we can look at what they spent.
A year two years three years and generally, obviously my I, we work with a lot of nonprofits and I've had experience previously that does tend to be a little bit of less awareness of maybe exactly what's in place in the smaller nonprofits.
Though it's easy to lose track of what you have everywhere.
So my recommendation is kind of tying in with what with what Carl said, make sure you know every piece of technology you have, and then make that definition of how long you're going to have before you replace it.
And your budget is based around that process.
If you're doing this at that level and you're doing it with your computers being under under warranty and then your servers being under warranty. The replacement of those devices often is going to fall under having the part replaced if it's breaking early or fully replacing the device so it's under warranty again.
It significantly decreases your unexpected costs and unexpected versus expected costs is exactly what the budget comes down to.
You can't be consistent if you aren't aware or expecting anything to go wrong.
And that's the other thing that I tend to see is that there's this kind of hope of it's working now it'll keep working.
And we can't we can't do that.
That's where it gets a little dangerous.
The days when your server is 10 years old is, you know, that can be a very expensive replacement why you avoided some expenditure sides of it that can be very painful when it's unplanned and you know, labor is typically when deploying new solutions is one of your most expensive components that will far exceed the actual
costs of the what you're acquiring in a lot of cases, sides of that so anything you do that's planned and organized to be far, far cheaper.
And so whatever you can get in a proactive stance and align your budget properly side of it and just plan accordingly it's going to definitely help control your overall it costs.
Reactionary is just very expensive.
Very expensive.
There's the amount of time the amount of extra cost that goes into getting something deployed same day next day within a week so that you can keep operating is exponentially bigger than the amount to say oh we have to be down for a week because of a big change.
You can plan ahead for it you you aren't having to cancel appointments that were scheduled or cancel things that were already in place.
I mean that's that's the biggest part is trying to be proactive us trying to be reactive about it, trying to not just plan but also say we know this is going to happen.
Or we know that something will occur and you can plan for unexpected events in a similar way of what will we do if something breaks that we're not expecting to break.
Should we have a spare on hand.
Should we have a second location we can go to.
I'm constantly falling into the incident response side of things and I need to stop that.
There's there's so many things that can go wrong and you know that's where I tend to live with the work that I do but.
When you're planning for that budget.
You can have those thoughts because you've already covered the basics of weight which machines are the most important.
Like does out if our directors laptop dies is that more critical than the one that we tend to print from in the office.
Probably.
And those same same replacement policies and putting together that that budget not even putting together a budget I think putting together just an asset list.
Putting together a data location list putting together a software list.
This goes in with with what you said before Kyle about once you have those things you can say well this software costs X amount a year.
This hardware needs to be replaced every five years.
This data is in a location that we need to move because we don't like where it is right now or we want to put it in the cloud eventually.
That asset list as well as being a huge compliance requirement for basically every compliance that can run through my head when I'm saying this.
Is where I personally start when I'm talking about budgets.
I know it gets a little bit more granular and there's ways to do it that are quicker.
But I feel like for me at least that list is where I go before I begin to have that conversation because otherwise I'm.
I mean there's there's too many unknowns.
Yeah.
Yeah it's just yeah it's really just organizing getting all organized so you can actually.
You know assess where you need to go with it.
Because that that planning is just so paramount side.
You know it kind of lends in we talked about the nonprofit side.
You know one area is we discussed with me nonprofits because obviously you know the dollars are are limited.
And typically you know they need to be very kind of up the spend side with it and you know I always have necessarily the consistency of a revenue stream because they're not necessarily selling anything.
They rely on grants and other things.
You know programs from Microsoft and Google and vendors they have nonprofit programs with nonprofit licensing that's very very cost effective side of it.
In many of them for example you talk about you know understanding your data location.
You know you can leverage the cloud file storage systems on their side and now eliminate the spend of saying on premise file server which then also opens up better security and better functionality side of it but.
Many organizations again just haven't taken that stop to plan that side once you know then you can leverage and now you're that one spend with that lower cost.
License side you just leverage even further and you get into these packages like three sixty five and those other components there's so many tools and services there that can replace what you're probably paying for.
In other aspects you're kind of having that extra spend.
Then you can ultimately eliminate.
So now you're now you're just that much more efficient.
As well so that lowers your it spend.
Yeah I mean I had that exact conversation with a friend who came to me for some advice not too long ago.
Their current it was recommending that they replace their entire service system update their entire local network.
They had completely disconnected buildings and so they were going to have to get some side to side.
VPNs.
It was a I'm forgetting the term which is great.
Basically radio signal Wi-Fi connections.
Oh really.
Yeah.
Like a wireless bridge.
A wireless bridge.
That's the one.
Yes they were.
They're quite remote to make sure that they had the full land and the other locations and they had internet at every building they didn't need that and I recommended they just look into what would happen if they moved everything up to their office three six five environment that they already had.
We were nearing a six figure save on their expenditure when it came to hardware deployment costs training costs for their staff because it's important to keep that in mind when you're changing your environment as well.
It was a big saving for them all because they their current it just didn't really have someone in place to have that conversation for them.
Which I think for me is kind of a large part of this as well.
Generally you maybe have someone on site.
Maybe you do have an internal IT person.
But they're they're good with the hands on side of things.
Right.
They're good with making the computers run again making sure the networks are fixing the Internet if it's broken.
Maybe they're fantastic with the software you use as well.
Right.
They're significantly saving you money.
But the business side of things how that works for the organization is such a different mindset.
I can still remember the moment that my an old CEO said to me and like pointed that difference out and I felt my brain break a little bit as I went from thinking like an engineer to thinking like someone who was like work like business minded in that way.
And that that is where I think we see the most of this cost savings coming from.
Because if you aren't planning ahead if you've got someone who is just fixing things as they break you can't have that planning in place.
Because you're not thinking about an upfront cost to save money in the future.
It's more about trying to keep those costs low total which makes sense until something breaks and you're still spending the money you would have spent before spent before and it will break.
I think is what it comes down to this.
There's no way to avoid that.
Yeah.
And it'll break at the worst possible time.
Generally, it just will.
You know the other the other aspects I we talk about when you're talking about your situation and going to 365 at the day side of it. You know the other costs and the other benefit side is you talk about your your your incident side.
You're like a disaster recovery and you kind of those other sides the cost of backup and those other things that that also you know are areas that are probably not addressed in many cases but should be.
So now if you don't if you know if you try to address it and you have an embrace some of these other types of services side that now you got those additional costs coming in so you know now you do you get the benefits of simplifying your infrastructure side.
Now you enable other capabilities just didn't fly out half.
That wouldn't even cost you more so there's there's there's multiple rewards but again it all comes back to really understanding first.
You know where you're where you're at.
And then then you can make much better planning decisions.
And that extra time up front you know really pay a lot of dividends versus the you know being on the I always call that technology treadmill just kind of feels like you just kind of just continuously just replace what we're doing and you tend to run with the methodology.
Well it's working we don't have a lot of challenges or problems so we're just going to keep doing what we're doing.
Where at some point there is a there's a benefit to stop and pause and and assess just because technology changes so fast that we are having the conversation the other day that if you're replacing a server that's you know five years old.
And now you're going to put another one in that now you're talking about a 10 year span between those two 10 years in our field is is a lifetime.
So you know you really I think have to reassess holistically how you're leveraging your technology before you make that next five year spend because at the end of that five years it's probably not going to be the right solution if you're replacing a lot of cases or you may not want to just do like for like you may want to start
replacing other aspects of certain cloud technologies other areas potentially outsource other ways where maybe make a partial spin there now and start looking at some other ways so you start making steps in the right direction.
But again can't do that unless you stop and take a holistic planning session and really say how we use in technology what are really needed to do what what else is out there is there a better way to handle this.
And I know you'd love to talk about the cybersecurity risk and all that definitely come into those into those conversations that you just need to find ways to mitigate risk quite honestly.
And technology now needs to be part of the conversation because legacy it if you call it that on just having systems on site and doing those things there's there's a lot of risk footprint there that you may want to assess that you don't want to have you know going forward.
Yeah, and you've you've reminded me of something from a previous previous organization.
Basically there was a an organization a nonprofit will coming into assist and we found out during our assessment that they were.
They had someone who was assisting them and basically volunteering for them as their it was a full network administrator for a large organization nearby and they were basically when their servers were being replaced they were providing these servers to the the the replace the ones to the nonprofit.
For free as a way of allowing them to kind of upgrade their hardware consistently.
And very kind of them really nice.
One of the things that we found from that though was that the hardware that was being replaced and put in was continuing to run the software or the operating system that was in use previously.
Which meant that the software they were getting the OS that we're getting was at minimum five years old.
And on top of that the technician that was offering their time while a fantastic technician from everything I've seen did have a proclivity for older server versions.
So this this occurred in around 2017 I want to say 2018 and they were running server 2008, which at that time already we knew was not doing very well.
So we're instantly in a position where we need to have a conversation around hey there's a lot of security flaws in this version.
At the very least you need to upgrade to revision to which they hadn't done.
And then on top of that we need to talk about what security features you don't have in place and what you need to have in place.
And that was just at a I've opened this computer up and can see exactly what it's running and that fills me with dread.
I hadn't run any scans I hadn't done any security checks yet I was just afraid.
That is something that you can't be aware of if you're if it's not really a priority.
And I know that it seems like it's not you've got a situation in place that's working for you these things are happening but having that kind of.
You know a new set of eyes come in and review it at any time is always good.
It's also a kind of necessity. It's a necessity. Wow I'm really struggling today.
It's a necessity. A lot of the compliance well that you have third party assessments vulnerability scans run.
These types of things are to be honest expensive.
If you have those compliance requirements you'll know and you should be meeting them.
But they are something that can be planned for and mitigated.
One of the things I used to offer clients when when they were when I was working as a technician was a basic run down of the software they were using and then comparing it with what I knew from everything I saw every day working for an MSP with what the most up to date and current version of the software on the market was.
And often we find that someone was still running Sage 2008 which is great and did its job but also isn't as hopeful as it could be now.
And then we see solutions like QuickBooks Cloud.
Maybe it's not the right solution for you but there is definitely places where it's a fantastic solution and significantly cuts down on what you need in office right in the same way that moving to Office 365 can.
Reviewing that is not something like like you said Carl that many nonprofits do because if it's working we want it to keep working.
Yeah, that's just not a priority side with it.
Yeah.
I use the analogy with with a customer situation the other day side but it was around the you know the wellness check at a doctor.
Just because you know you go we all go to the doctor here I can always should you do you do a wellness check just because even though you feel okay there may still be some.
Something that you need to address or be aware of so you go in and have the doctor and they do some additional scans and whatnot to determine side of it and they may say hey you got your cholesterol is higher than things you can't see.
But could definitely turn into a big much bigger problem if you don't address and that's similar to your bringing in a third party assessment or review side of it and just get in a periodic review our opinion side of it because even though your old software your old servers may be running fine now.
That doesn't mean that you're not putting yourself in a situation for.
You know a very unexpected event and that that's really what we're trying to advocate for because then it gets back to their reactionary side of how painful and the timing of that's never going to be ideal.
It's not going to be going into a long weekend. It's going to be when you need to.
You know run if you're in a manufacturer it's going to it's going to affect your production it's going to affect the productivity of all your workers you're going to you know there's it's going to be you know a very unpleasant situation it's going to be expensive just because of mercy dispatch fees and you're going to have to.
Make reactionary spends which again get really expensive and probably at the end of the day you don't put you in the best situation when you come out with either you're probably no better off than you were when it all started because you're just trying to recover so.
There's just all kinds of reasons to say is there why it appears on the surface to be saving money it's really not.
You know and you may get like these term lucky but you could get lucky and not have the problem but the likelihood the odds are not in your favor.
And they become less and less in the cyber security world just because every and any vulnerability seems to be on display.
Across across networks now so they tend to get exploited if they're there they will be so you know it's just become too far too simple for them to do it so.
That's why we're so strongly navigating against you know putting in things that just have a large risk footprint to them just.
It's not worth the impact of the business and.
I tend to see that often where again.
We have tech technicians that are part of the organization side of it do great jobs with supporting the users they're connected they run the application sides of it.
But unfortunately many situations they put value into you know saving five dollars on a monitor or you know buying refurbished or used you know desktops because they're saved in seventy five dollars desktop.
So they tend to devalue labor and time and they also tend to have some disconnect on the business impact side of that to productivity and the cost of labor if that is not working.
So we come into situations where.
You know that they replace the workstations but they're replacing them to your point with five year old.
Workstations so you know what was now a ten year old got replaced with five year old so yeah they're five years newer but they're still by all practical purposes slower by modern standards.
And users productivity is affected by it.
And the users are tend to be upset because it's slow it's tend to be underpowered by modern standards with it.
And although it was looked at by the person making the purchase decision was somebody who valued themselves by saving you know again seventy five dollars a desktop.
Well you know that seventy five dollars gets lost on a daily basis and productivity so the multiplier is pretty huge but usually why they're being so.
You know unfortunately there it's not all places of course but you know we see those scenarios so it's that's where you know the business owners need to be in the sea levels need to be at least involved in our stand and say.
You know I don't want you to cut you know costs I want predictability and I want.
Quoted value but you know not going to reward you on trying to cut corners on the on the cost because that isn't necessarily going to give you the the lost cost.
I T. you know that's this not part of the equation.
Yeah there's there's a lot to be said for that and I say the classic I T. trope.
Which is that person who can fix anything that's kind of given to them and does you know work for the organization and resolve that and that is a fantastic skill to have.
But one thing that I think spin true ever since I T. started is that.
The role of I T. was always partially undervalued on top of that it was definitely.
Under explored in terms of what the scope of it was and we see this now with what it's become.
We don't just have a.
Service technician trying to do everything we have service technicians and we have our network administrators and we have our cabling team and we have the security side of things which alone is for different departments.
It's.
One person trying to do all that.
Means that they are either overextending themselves.
Or.
Probably not able to dig in as deeply on some of these things as they they may want to or could be able to if they had more time to really focus on it.
And I think that's where those types of mistakes get made.
So trying to save five dollars here because you think that's going to be more useful than replacing it with one that's long term comes from having that technical side of things rather than the business minded side of things.
I still remember.
A manufacturing organization that I was working with where I advocated harder than I ever have before for them to replace their workstations which at the time were just a hodge podge of whatever they'd been out of pickup.
I found machines that would meet the minimum requirements for all of their software and got the owner to upgrade his machine only to begin with.
By the end of his first week with that machine.
They'd ordered brand new machines for everyone on the executive team.
By the end of that second of the week they had their machines.
We were replacing every single workstation in the business.
And like you said, Kyle, it's productivity.
You're kind of if you're using these machines that are five years old, it may take you five, 10 seconds a click to get to something and everyone's just accepted that.
But it doesn't have to be.
If everyone's saving a like down to a second or half a second just to get something done on a server because it is finally running at the speed it's recommended to be running at.
You're saving hours a day.
And you can't see it until you try it and until you have that that perspective of the way I saw that was to say well here's how quickly my machine can do it.
And just seeing that distinction was enough for him to say let's try it.
Yeah, that productivity measurement is huge.
Again, it kind of gets lost and just focusing on just the technology application along saying well we'll run.
Well, there's a difference between running and running right.
So that's definitely the running optimal for the business side of that.
And there's a different spend.
So, you know, typically when we're looking at it, we recommend you find the right size device for the organization.
You probably have a few multiples depending on the type of business work that they do.
And then, you know, set aside an X amount of budgets that you have some $2,500 machines you have some $1,500 machines you may have some $4,500.
She's a couple of those for your power users sides of those but you know, create your budget, you know how many you're going to have every year.
And, you know, when it's only one fifth of your desktops or end point side of it tends to be a very magical spending you spread that over the course of that year even so quarter over quarter over quarter.
You know, not only are you spreading those costs outside of it you're also, you know, you're, you're lessening the impact of the organization because you only have one fifth of the other workforce is being impacted by a hardware replacement cycle side of that so your productivity a lot, you know,
because you will have some productivity impact why their machines are being replaced.
Well, I'll say the technology get much better see that's been minimized but there's still some.
And it will as it keeps if you know, when you have on site it or part of side, you know calls to the support desk.
After the migration is limited as well because you have a much smaller subset.
So, there's a lot of reasons to to advocate and do that but now it's predictable.
Everything's current and tends to be supported more far more reliable as Matthew was mentioned on the warranty side of that you get the newer hardware again it's not as much wear and tear.
So, there's a lot of good reasons and ultimately will lower your it spend.
And the only thing I was going to add on the internal side that we see this come up from time to time is the use of just open source or free software side of that and I know that tends to be attractive in a lot of cases.
And why I love technology and I love I love Linux and I love a lot of those things it's not something I generally I would advocate for to put in production.
I mean, reason why is that it tends to be built by the now the person who built it has all the knowledge, and you're relying on that individual now for your sole line of support.
And if that individual is on vacation and available, it's just very limited in your support access which will ultimately impact the business in a negative way.
Whether you know if you're looking at open source phone systems or firewalls or servers of those things it's just you can't put an SLA around you don't have a commercial support line to go to tip you know, I would advocate against it in a commercial environment.
I think it's great for learning I think it's great for you know personal use side of that to experience with technology side of that you tend to see those open sources get integrated into commercial applications and when you do and you have a commercial support line.
So with a vendor line and guaranteed SLA with with live support, then I think having that in a commercial environment is is is where you want to be but without that, I would strongly caution businesses to reconsider is why it seems like a low cost
upfront impact the business again, but in fact the productivity in a huge negative way.
I feel that the the times I most often see open source or you know those those custom solutions in place it's because of that kind of undervaluing of it again, the the person who implemented it said I can do that for cheaper than this commercial solution that does the same thing.
And then they do it without documenting it. Obviously sometimes they do not call on anyone out. But generally it tends to be less documented than you'd hope if that person was away.
And I think that kind of ties in with the last thing I wanted to add as well which is that one of the things I learned when I was getting into the net side of the network side of things was that a lot of the organizations I worked with.
And this is obviously not true of everyone. It was just true of some of the organizations I worked with really thought of themselves as X type of organization who has computers.
Despite the fact that computers did every part of their job for them. They didn't use paper anymore. It was everything is documented on the computer. And at that point, you are at least partially a technology company.
And you need to treat that technology the same way you treat every part of the business. It needs to be as important because if they fail, you're losing that productivity. You're losing bottom line every minute that that machine's down.
When it comes to the nonprofits, I think that that is in the in from again, it's different for everyone. But if that's something that seems to resonate with you, then think about how it is that the organization views itself.
Are you a nonprofit that supports XYZ and then also has to have computers or are you a nonprofit that uses computers to complete your mission.
And if that's the case and most likely it is.
Make sure that you're giving it the same priority you give other things that help you complete the mission, like your other employees like the business, like the building that you have.
Every part of that process is just as important. And that in those times when I've seen that shift occur, it has very quickly changed the way that I've been out of supply.
The best value because we're no longer arguing about.
I want to say the little things of, you know, a $5 here or there because we're talking about long term goals to make sure that the organization is the best it can be to meet that mission.
I think that's very well said. I think that's probably a good way to wind it up. I think very well said. I think that takes some time and recognize the value and take in the soft cost if you would as a big part of the equation.
Yeah, I think the longevity of your company or nonprofit, your business is important to remember when considering your your IT and everything you're putting into that. So, well, thank you. Thank you so much, Kyle and Matthew for joining us today.
If you enjoyed this podcast, please like, subscribe, comment. If you have a question or a topic, if you want to hear more about budgeting and sort of the admin side of IT, please reach out to us at info at cIT-net.com or head out to our website at cIT-net.com slash podcast.