Your Business Shrunk. Why Didn’t the IT Bill?
The business got smaller, the IT invoice did not
When trade slows down, most costs get a proper look at. The wage bill comes down, the mileage gets questioned and somebody quietly downgrades the biscuits.
Your IT contract and costs carry on regardless.
Licences, user seats, backup capacity, security bundles, all of it sized on the day you signed, for the business you had on that day. But if that day was a couple of years and a few leavers ago, you are paying for a version of yourself that no longer exists.
None of it shrinks on its own and that is the part people assume is handled. There is no quiet little system watching your headcount, noticing you now run eleven people rather than eighteen, adjusting the bill accordingly and dropping you a note to say so. Somebody needs to sit down, look at what you actually use and take the surplus off to reduce the IT costs. That somebody is usually your provider, who has no earthly reason to hand back their own money.
I am not calling anyone a crook, it is just human nature with a direct debit attached.
So the business got smaller while the backup stays sized for data you stopped generating in 2023 and the security bundle carried on covering laptops that went off to the recycling centre. Every line renews on time, without fail, forever if you don’t check for unused Microsoft licences and IT services no longer needed.
You can see how easy it can be to find yourself overspending on IT.
Two questions then, for any owner reading this.
Has the shape of your business changed in the last year or so? Fewer people, a site closed, a service dropped, a team moved to part time? It’s time for an IT contract review.
And when did anybody last sit down with you and review your IT invoice out loud, line by line, telling you in plain English what each thing is and how many of them you genuinely need today?
If the honest answer to that second one is never, you are in extremely normal company and you are almost certainly paying every month for people who left and this is where I can help you review IT spending.
I rather enjoy this part of the job, funnily enough. Telling somebody they can cancel a few things feels a great deal better than sending them a bill.
Happy to read yours with you, no jargon & no hard sell.
Jacqui
J & J Systems, Canterbury
