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Audit and Expense Management

Enterprise IT budgets and Tactical Cost Reduction Strategies

Technology has been the driving force of business efficiency. It has been the catalyst for delivering 300% increases in worker output efficiency over the last five decades.

Information Technology leaders are constantly challenged with the task of making sure that every dollar of their budget is put to work to create value for their organization. This exercise becomes incredibly complex when dealing with a large inventory of different technologies, variable billing cadences, and unlimited wants and needs of the user base.

Often, Information Technology leaders are given generic directives of “do more with less” or “find ways to cut costs.”

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Your IT environment might seem vast like it has a life of its own. Indeed, most elements of IT networks are necessary for security, productivity, and efficiency. But a poorly budgeted IT account can feel like death by a million cuts;

you’ll feel the hundreds of small items buried in bills that significantly impact your business’ potential. You know this, and we sure do as well.

Let Defensive help audit your IT expenses so you can take back control of your budgets.

Understanding IT Budgets

On average, businesses spend 8% of their revenue on Information Technology. On the one hand, Industrial Manufacturing firms may only spend around 4% of their annual budgets on IT, and the Software and tech hosting companies spend significantly more- on average, a quarter of revenue.

On the macro level, business sectors that spend higher percentages of revenue on Information Technology average a higher Compounded Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) than sectors with lower technology investment.

On the micro level, businesses within a given industry that best allocate their technology budget to value are going to be the most competitive in their segment.

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For this reason, the most important factor for businesses isn’t how much they spend on technology but the incremental value that every dollar spent on technology can bring to the business.

Let Defensive help optimize your technology budget.

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Challenges of Managing IT Spend

No one ever said budgeting was easy. In fact, creating and sticking to strict budgets is notoriously challenging, especially in an industry as fast-growing and evolving as information technology. The majority of executives cite too many manual processes and spending efficiency as their biggest hurdle.

Defensive can help automate IT and security processes to simplify and streamline your entire IT stack. We’ll optimize your IT spending to overcome the most significant budgeting challenges

IT Spend by Industry

The average organization spends a combined 44% of its annual IT budget on on-premise software and infrastructure to support it. However, with the world shifting to cloud platforms and remote data sharing, on-prem IT spending shouldn’t be your biggest expense. Comparatively, businesses spend 18% of their annual budget on cloud technology and 7% on SaaS.

Industries like healthcare, industrial product manufacturing, retail, eCommerce, and tech hosting are the most susceptible to unnecessary on-prem IT solutions. We can help you revolutionize your workflow to reduce costs and adapt to a modern environment.

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Telecommunications Spend

Telecommunications services billing is riddled with complexity- costs can completely vary by service area and can even drastically vary between one building and another. There are hundreds of providers- ILECs, regional CLECs, and incumbent Cable Companies, each with different contract lengths as well as varying taxes and tariffs.

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It is no surprise with this much complexity and variability that, on average, businesses overspend on telecommunications technologies by 37%.

You don’t need to drastically reduce all aspects of your IT spending, but simply reducing wasted telecommunications over-expenditure could save you 37% of this budget segment.

Speak to our team about our cost-cutting telecommunication solutions.

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Network Spend

Network circuit contracts start on their date of activation rather than contract execution. Since different connectivity products can have vastly different installation timeframes, businesses are challenged with having completely staggered contract dates across their WAN.

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Due to this complexity, without extremely detailed planning, Telecommunications and WAN transitions often fail to provide immediate cost-cutting savings due to scheduling and necessary service overlaps. Businesses often opt to just upgrade speeds with the same provider, and as this continues to occur, businesses often find themselves overspending an average of 39% above where their costs should be.

However, when engineered, planned, and priced correctly, businesses can often find large network upgrades as a source of major gains in speed as well as reductions in costs. In a retrospective study, we found over 150 company network upgrades, a 39% reduction in monthly network costs while increasing network capacity by an average of 1300%.

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Mobility Costs

Our solutions for automating mobility plan adjustments continually deliver 40%+ in monthly savings. Our AI solutions constantly analyze voice, SMS, and data utilization across your pool of users and can rebalance plans in real-time to prevent overages.

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Let us help you optimize mobile costs and maximize automation for a more efficient workflow.

On-Premise to Cloud Transitions

In the modern world, businesses that still heavily rely on on-prem infrastructure often find themselves in black holes of expenditure to support legacy systems. A multi-faceted approach of system modernization, application modernization, and shifts towards  Hyperscale cloud and SaaS tools can reduce many of the largest line items of your IT budget by as much as 70%. Public cloud services can unlock more efficient workflows, holistic security, and significant savings.

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With cloud services, you’ll see an immediate difference in the first year and sustained savings over the next three years.

Despite the myth that on-prem infrastructure is cheaper in the long run, cloud services are far more cost-effective and efficient to future-proof your business.

50% reduction of costs moving on prem software to SaaS

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Software Licenses

On average, businesses waste up to 38% of their budget on both unused software licenses. With around 29% of the average IT budget going towards on-prem software and SaaS, it’s vital you get the most for your money. Only half of licensed business software expenses are maximized to their full potential.

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We’ll audit your software licenses and help reduce unnecessary expenses to streamline your IT infrastructure and cut costs.

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Cloud Costs

While we previously discussed the possibility of unlocking savings by shifting systems onto cloud services, maintaining cost controls and governance in the cloud are paramount to realizing these savings. On average, businesses self-report that 30% of their cloud expenses are wasted expenditures due to failures in cost controls, visibility, and governance.

Cloud billing is immensely complex, and with tens of thousands of variable cloud costs between AWS, Azure, and GCP alone, it can feel like a million small papercuts. For most business analysts, it becomes nearly impossible to map services and their costs to a true value.

With our Cloud Cost Management solutions, businesses can quickly identify hundreds of instances of wasted spending across all of their accounts and across all clouds and take complete control of their costs.

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On average, with a Cloud Cost Management platform, businesses are able to reduce their cloud expenditure by an average of 38%.

Cloud Cost Management platform
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Internal Priorities

Too often, internal priorities dictate IT expenditure. While individuals within the business might find certain assets increase efficiency and productivity—like remote working—they might not consider the overall impact on the organization. For instance, in retail, 44% of individual employees feel they are effective working remotely. However, only 29% actually feel this has a positive impact on the business as a whole.

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Our objective view can help you take a holistic and practical approach to your IT budget to maximize potential.

Areas of Expertise

We can help your business cut costs in the following areas:

  • Telecommunications
  • Cybersecurity
  • Infrastructure
  • Software and SaaS
  • Public Cloud
  • Data Center and Private Cloud

Our Process

Categorize

We take stock of the situation and categorize all your expenses.

Itemize

We determine the value of each of your expenses to your business.

Analyze

We analyze how to reduce the cost of necessary IT assets.

Take Action

We cut costs throughout your organization’s IT budget.

Vintage 2008 Company

We were founded in 2008 during the Great Financial Crisis. Auditing and optimizing business IT, Telecommunications, and Cybersecurity Expenditures are our DNA. The first few years of our company were around helping businesses survive and thrive. Regardless of the state of the economy- it always makes sense to keep costs and efficiency in check.

FEATURED TECHNOLOGY PARTNERS

Why Defensive Networks?

Defensive is a Next Generation Solution Provider for a Cloud-First World. We exist to take the guesswork out of Cybersecurity and Information Technology procurement and adoption.

Defensive of your Brand.

We are trusted by leading enterprises around the globe.​

Defensive of your People.​

Let’s create harmony between Infosec, IT, Executives, End Users, and Finance.​

Defensive of your Time.

We’re straight to the point with technologies and strategies that work.

Defensive of your Budget.

Eliminate wasted expenditure and maximize the value of every dollar.

TRUSTED BY

87 of the Fortune 1000
Over 1,400+ small, medium and large enterprises.

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