How to work out what you really need to invest in IT

There is no such thing as finished or having it all when it comes to IT spending. The very small and the very large are in the same boat of having more IT projects and solutions they could put in place, even if money was not an issue, and of course it is.

Priorities should drive the investment decisions but even that can be hard to determine among competing desires.

So here is a three-step process for prioritisation.

1)      List all the IT things you would like to spend money on; devices, networks, servers, cloud platforms, software, security, back-up and so on. This gives you your list of wants.

2)      Now look at the business drivers for each of the things on the list; business productivity, risk, cool new features, being seen with the latest gadget. This helps you to establish the real need for each investment.

3)      Now look at where the business will get the most benefit from the change in technology or addition of new tools. That of course gives us the business requirements which is really where we should invest.

Every business has a different set of motivators that drive requirements so there is no vanilla solution that fits all and at different stages, different priorities will drive the requirements in different directions.

The one thing that is for sure is that if in 2016 you are not investing in the IT your business requires it will get harder to manage and harder to drive better productivity.

So as you step away for a break do start thinking about your wants, needs and requirements.

All the best for your festive season and a happy and prosperous new year.

David Markus is the founder of Combo – the IT services company that is known for business IT that makes sense. How can we help?