How much should I spend on IT?
A few weeks ago I was talking to some Big enterprise IT people. We where just comparing some of the problems everyone has no matter how big or small you are. The question came up about IT budgets. How much should we spend on IT?
The answer? Well they told me that they tell their clients to spend about 3% of their annual sales. So, one of my customers has sales near 80 million, so that would be $240,000. Do they spend that much? No, but lets be fair, this includes all IT related services. Phone, Cell phones, Internet access, Personal, and anything else that deal with IT and communication. Add up what they spend (rough numbers) and I get about $192,000. That also doesn't include any hardware, which you would really need to look at over a few years to account for servers and upgrades. I can say though, they don't spend $50,000 in hardware, but they do come close to the 3%. In fact, there are a few things I didn't count for, webhosting, E-com, some of the accountant's pay (since she does some of the IT work).
I challenge everyone, Take 3% of your sales and look at using that for IT. Add up what you are currently spending, are you underspending or overspending? In fact, if you are a Solar Customer, call us and we will help you add up your IT spending and help come up with a budget for the future!