The uncertain economy is certain to mean continuing budget reviews, scrutinizing of all capital expenditures including IT costs and just a lot of time spent writing memos, sitting in meetings and facing time with the CEO and CFO. With the idea that the best defense is a good offense, here’s five ideas to change the dynamics of the IT budget in your company.

1. REALLY CUT your operating costs. It has been said again and again: 70, 80 or even 90 percent of your budget goes to keeping the IT lights on. You can do something about it. Forget the reviews about how many servers, IT employees and how much IT “space” your size company should have. Do something radical. Set a number on the number of applications you can support (by cost). You may have 25 or you may have hundreds. Have those using the applications decide what they must keep and what they can eliminate. They may have redundant capabilities or software that has been replaced but never removed. Once you get your number, renegotiate your software licenses, move your applications that are “keepers” to redundant, or virtualized, servers and shut down the rest. list is simply orderly rows of data such as addresses, names of clients or products, and quarterly sales amounts. Some familiar Excel features are used in this command but in new and convenient ways. You can enter list data without using this command, but the new method has many benefits.

2. Stop buying LAPTOPS. How much time are you spending buying laptops, retrieving laptops from laid off employees and trying to figure out how to unload and reuse aging, much abused laptops? Here’s a radical way to handle it. You support the applications. Let the employee who wants the laptop buy his or her own. When they get canned, all you do is remotely wipe the corporate apps and data (it really isn’t that hard anymore)! They get to start their new career with their existing/old laptop and you just move on without playing the laptop swap.

3. Stop buying PRINTERS AND PRINTING SUPPLIES. You maintain one decent printer for each area/department. If anyone feels they MUST have a printer in their office, they can purchase it and maintain their own supplies.

4. Don’t buy new BLACKBERRIES and new IPHONE for everyone. In fact, rethink whether you should be in the business of supplying cellphones and paying the bill. Times are tough, someone wants a touch screen Blackberry, they buy it. Again, you supply the corporate software applications, they buy the hardware and service contracts. Most often, employees want their own devices anyway.

5. SHUT DOWN corporate access to everything except necessary corporate apps. No eBay, no fantasy sports teams, no IM, YouTube, web surfing, no Internet nothing except the business of your business. You won’t make many friends, but you will be able to say you’re your bandwidth is being used to run your business and not entertain your employees.

All five radical ideas in their presented forms may not be appropriate for your business, but we hope they at least get you thinking in the direction of streamlining and eliminating some of the unnecessary and budget guzzling activities taking place in your IT world.

Consider Responza your resource for information regarding computer use, choice and care. We can provide knowledgeable advice on IT budgetary concerns and assist you in implementing cost cutting policies and initiatives – even if they are radical!