Cold comfort

Technology and telecoms executives give us their tips on using tech to take out costs
By Tim Chapman

When times are tough, IT investment might not seem like a priority. But changing the software and hardware you use, or the way that you use it, can help cut costs or help you work better.

In contrast to the hot technologies pushed during boom years, IT is now driven by what some industry watchers have dubbed “cold tech” — technologies that can deliver savings in the short term.

We asked Manchester's IT providers and users for their best ideas.

You probably outsource many of your business operations, so why not your software?

Software-as-a-service (SaaS) can take a lot of the headache and cost out of managing business-critical systems, and opens up expensive software to small businesses.

SaaS provides the latest software for a monthly fee, cutting installation, licensing and maintenance costs. The model has been around for a while, but is seeing strong growth as reliable broadband and mobile networks become more common.

Upfront costs for a common package such as Microsoft Dynamics CRM can top £10,000 for the smallest business, said Mark Seemann, a director at Bury-based Genesis Communications, and rapidly head into the millions.

“What SaaS does is deliver that software without having to have any equipment installed on your premises which dramatically cuts costs,” he said. “For CRM, it's typically £35 per user per month.”

The service also makes it easier to grow and contract your IT alongside your businesses — Seemann calls it “elastic IT”.

Why pay for software at all, when you can get an equivalent service for free?

Software suites such as OpenOffice have been slowly growing in popularity. Offering a similar range of products as Microsoft, OpenOffice can be downloaded for free and doesn't require any licence payments.

“People are starting to question the value of Microsoft's licensing terms and costs,” said Dene Rowe, IT director at law group Halliwells. “OpenOffice will start to penetrate the smaller market a little more, but I can't see it happening in the mid to large sector.”

Anyone other than very small or new enterprises is likely to have legacy issues in transferring old systems and documents to a new system, Rowe notes. But even if you're unlikely to change, the threat to do so can be a powerful tool when renegotiating your office systems.


Avoid downtime


If you depend on your web presence to attract or manage customers, losing that presence will cost money. According to research by hosting provider UKFast, over 80 per cent of businesses suffer some unplanned downtime each year, costing an average 3.6 per cent of annual revenue.

Much of that can be avoided by using a managed hosting service. It's another form of outsourcing that can remove a lot of the headaches of doing it yourself.

“Quite often the money that downtime costs businesses is more than the cost of managed hosting per year,” said Jonathan Bowers, UKFast communications director. “Businesses get the benefits of having the expertise to deal with problems, and it costs them nothing extra.”

Using a host can also improve the experience for potential customers, as hosts typically offer substantially faster connections. Search engine giant Google recently acknowledged that speed is a factor in how it ranks websites, so hosting could even help you win new business.

If you're running different IT applications, you're probably running a different server for each, with each one costing around £600 a year in electricity alone. But you can cut costs by cutting your servers. The key is a software trick called virtualisation, which allows one server to run many different applications.

“The whole point of virtualisation is you put in one or two more powerful servers,” said Paul Sweeney, managing director of ANS Group. “You can run on that one server maybe 10 different applications, so you're saving nearly £6,000 a year just on electricity.”

While it's cheaper to set up your operations on one or two powerful servers, migrating will require upfront investment. “The servers you use are more expensive, but you can do a lot more with them,” said Sweeney. Virtualisation can provide net savings of 60 per cent, according to ANS.

Do more on your desktop

A little investment in your desktop hardware can pay dividends. Phil Jones, UK marketing director of printer group Brother, says the group improved productivity by 25 per cent by using bigger monitors.

Key executives and people who spend much of their time on Excel spreadsheets or Powerpoint presentations had their standard 17-inch monitors replaced with 24-inch screens. LCD technology means that larger screens are now much more affordable, with basic models starting at around £300.

“You can review far more than you can on a regular screen — for example, you can compare two A4 documents, rather than having to print them out,” said Jones. “That's had a dramatic impact on the amount of printing that people do in the office, and that improves efficiency.”

Jones himself uses a laptop for remote working, and plugs this into a 24-inch monitor on his desk. “You can not only multi-task, but hyper-task,” he said. “It's been an absolute godsend for me because it really allows me to be as efficient as I need to be.”

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