What’s Your Law Firm I.T. Budget?

Just because your a small firm doesn’t mean that you can’t budget your year like big companies do. It makes money management easier for you and helps I.T. providers work within the boundaries of the budget knowing that they cannot go over. To many people, I.T. costs seem like a bottomless pit and I have been told this many times. Frankly, people don’t realize that their entire business revolves around I.T.. The businesses who understand are usually the ones who get what they want.  They know what their firm goals are and will work with their I.T. provider to have all needs met. Those are the businesses we like to hold on to. For all you negative Nancy’s out there still thinking I.T. is a bottomless pit, here’s a breakdown of what you should be spending. If your a small business with 10 PC’s and a server, chances are your spending around $8K-$14k/yr on maintenance plus the upkeep of your infrastructure. Relatively speaking for a 30 user company, I.T. costs may be between $27k-$35k/yr depending on your needs and use of technology. This is not taking into account upgrades and major changes, we are simply talking about maintenance and general work that may come up during the year. The reason why outsourced I.T. services work so well is because we get the job done at a fraction of the cost of hiring a full time tech. For small businesses, $10k/yr to take care of all I.T. needs is a drop in the bucket and an investment in your company’s future.

These rules change when talking about cloud and hosted solutions. The above figures were for technology hosted in-house, in your office. Hosted solutions are VERY cheap for small firms, and are VERY expensive for the big ones, just take that small number and multiply it by your office staff, that’s why it gets expensive. If your on the small side, think about cloud solutions. We have firms with full cloud solutions that pay $300/month for their entire firm tech. They never go down, and as long as they have an internet connection, they can work. Small price to pay for such high work flexibility. Hosted solution pricing really doesn’t ever change, you know what your going to pay each month, and it decreases the amount of extra I.T. costs to your I.T. services provider due to these cloud services offering free support. On the whole, budgeting is good and helps everyone. It creates an atmosphere where there are no surprises. Every small business that relies on I.T. in some aspect must have a budget, no company should be surprised by the costs involved for any service, let alone IT. Large or small, budgeting I.T. helps your bottom line.