This time of year, many organizations begin budgeting for the upcoming year. Sinu offers several Business Intelligence tools and best practices to help you allocate your operating budget wisely.
By John Christie, co-founder & COO
This time of year, many organizations begin budgeting for the upcoming year. Sinu offers several Business Intelligence tools and best practices to help you allocate your operating budget wisely.
**Consider Your Hardware Replacement Cycle **
As you plan your company’s operating budget, consider the lifespan of your business devices. Consider a replacement cycle of 3 to 4 years for desktop PCs and servers, and 1 to 3 years for mobile devices. If your business is ready to commit in budget, not only in preference, for tablets and smartphones, then plan accordingly for the maintenance costs and replacement cycles.
Use the Sinu Store as a guideline of what today’s devices cost and plan to replace 20-30% of your company’s devices yearly to ensure no device is more than 4 years old. (To access the Sinu Store, go to Sinu Support and click the STORE tab on the far right.)
If capital outlay is an impediment to proper lifecycle management, Sinu has several Hardware-as-a-Service (HaaS) offerings – with no upfront costs and no need to budget for support or replacements. (See Sinu Now Provides Hardware-as-a-Service (HaaS) for more information about this service.)
Are You Using the Most Effective IT Solutions?
Consider the cost and efficiency of the solutions you have in place today. We encourage many of our customers to rethink their IT infrastructure and software because most critical applications, including payroll and accounting software, have a cloud strategy that was not available just a few years ago. Furthermore, there are immediate benefits that most organizations can experience when adopting some of these hosted solutions; not only do you reduce the risk of data loss and disrupted service, these solutions can offer better remote access and cost savings.
Review Available Data from Sinu’s IT Reports and Business Intelligence
There are several IT Reports and Business Intelligence tools that are included in the Sinu platform as part of our all-inclusive IT service. These tools are easily found on the Sinu website, just click LOGIN at the top right-hand side of the page and enter your email address and click PORTAL LOGIN.
These tools provide answers to many operational questions that can affect your budget:
- Who are my key IT vendors?
- What computer hardware do I own?
- What software licensing is installed on my computers?
- What computers should I replace in the next 6 months?