As organizations try to find more efficient ways to reduce their IT department budgets, the good news is that there are many strategies to help reduce your costs without negatively affecting your department or the overall organization. The strategies you choose will vary depending on your situation and your goals, both short and long-term, but the following are 5 ways to help reduce your IT costs while improving output and overall value to the organization.
1. Shift Left
Employee wages are a big part of IT budgets. As such, you want to get the most efficient use of your IT staff’s skillset. It doesn’t make sense to have a Cisco engineer answering calls regarding basic PC problems or resetting passwords. By shifting (“shift left”) more resolutions from your Tier 2 or Tier 3 groups to the help desk, your cost per resolution goes down and you free up more time for your higher paid resources. In some cases, you can also reduce staffing. Shift left requires each of your resolver groups to identify frequently asked questions that can easily be documented in a Knowledge Base (KB) handled and resolved by the help desk. If you don’t have the help desk staff, tools, or expertise to pull this off, help desk outsourcing may be the way to go.
