Peer to Peer Magazine

10 PEER TO PEER: THE QUARTERLY MAGAZINE OF ILTA | SUMMER 2017 BEST PRACTICES 6 Tips To Stabilize and Reduce Out-of-Control IT Costs 6 Tips To Stabilize and Reduce Out-of-Control IT Costs If you feel like your IT costs have spun out of control, you are not alone. According to the "2016 ILTA/InsideLegal Technology Purchasing Survey," firms of all sizes spend up to 10 percent of their budgets on technology. by Joe Kelly A majority of the firms polled said that they spend between $5,000 and $11,000 in technology (soware, hardware, maintenance and support) per aorney each year. Fiy-three percent of the respondents said that their technology budgets increased over the last year, a 12 percent increase from the year before. Costs continue to grow as technology becomes increasingly important in every aspect of how aorneys practice law. Yesterday's luxuries have become today's pricey necessities. As IT infrastructure and technology eat away at the boom line, many are seeking ways to control and stabilize IT budgets. You need not be at the mercy of rising hardware and soware expenses or sacrifice the support needed and the services clients expect. Here are six tips to help your firm tame IT costs right away and stabilize them in the future. Tip 1: Determine IT Spend Before you can get IT costs under control, you need to know how much you are currently spending. Whether you manage your IT at the local office level or under a partner's supervision, or you work with a team in charge of budgets, spending insight is the benchmark for your savings initiatives. For midsize or smaller firms, pinning down spending can be more complicated. If your office functions without anyone with the primary job of overseeing IT and budgets regularly, someone should scrutinize the firm's general ledger to identify all IT-related expenses for hardware, soware, vendor services, consultants, connectivity, warranties, upgrade expenses and more. Tip 2: Identify Duplicate Systems In today's mobile world, people oen need the same programs on several devices. If you are not careful, unnecessary soware purchases can proliferate. Consider Microso Office. Every professional in every industry needs it. Aorneys most likely have it on their laptops, tablets and smartphones, and they may have a separate Office account at home that their organization pays for. While this extra expense might seem minimal, doubling up on costs adds up quickly. Issues can also arise from underutilized systems. Organizations oen have multiple applications that can accomplish the same tasks. Why? Perhaps because aorneys and staff use only a fraction of one solution

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