Telecom Expense Management and Call Accounting Technology!
2025 IT Budgets: Challenges and Opportunities
These are interesting times for CIOs and their IT departments. While budgets are forecasted to rise modestly, high interest rates, persistent inflation, and a volatile stock market create a challenging environment for IT leaders seeking to meet their technology goals in a cost-efficient way.
A CIO Magazine article covered the recently released Forrester 2025 Budget Planning Guide for Technology Executives, including reactions and insights from industry leaders. Here are just a few of the insights we've summarized and paraphrased that bear noting:
Where the bulk of budget dollars will be spent:
- Generative AI.
- No real surprise here. As AI use cases become clearer, companies are getting more comfortable with the value it can bring to their teams and their organizations. Spending on AI will increase along with training the team on how to deploy and use it in ways that add value to the organization.
- Software.
- Companies are looking to invest in software that can automate some of the more tedious, time-consuming tasks that take valuable talent away from more high value work.
Other trends we found interesting:
- Curtailing cloud “sprawl”.
- Companies are looking at how they are actually using the cloud. Many, in efforts to dive into cloud applications, have initially taken a shotgun approach, implementing applications across the board, but without a clear strategy.
- Making smaller purchases.
- Instead of sweeping transformative investments, many IT departments are opting for incremental improvements in the form of smaller, bite sized purchases.
- Saving money.
- Automating and tightening up processes, while avoiding unnecessary purchases will help IT departments make better use of their teams.
Saving money is more important now than ever.
Optimizing efficiency and saving money is key in these times of economic uncertainty and change. Through our twenty-plus years working with IT managers, we've identified several areas where tightening up can make a huge impact.
- Update/upgrade legacy systems.
- While some will continue to add value, legacy systems are generally more expensive to maintain.
- Get control of billing.
- Many IT managers don’t realize that up to 85% of their IT/telecom invoices contain errors. Continuing to over-pay invoices due to vendor errors can cost a company hundreds of thousands of dollars on their annual spend. There are tools to help avoid this costly mistake.
- Conduct regular audits.
- We recommend bringing in a professional to conduct an IT/telecom audit. Do it yourself and you’ll probably gain a savings in the range of 3-5%. Professional audits save more. As an example, our TTI audits are saving companies between 25-40% off the annual telecom spend.
The good news is that our team at TTI has your back when it comes to saving thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars on your annual telecom spend. Between our WinBill® telecom expense management system and our team of veteran IT experts, we can help you optimize your billing efficiency and make sure you're not leaving money on the table. Give us a shout. We're here to help!
About TeleManagement Technologies, Inc.
Since 1987, TTI has been designing software products that provide a better solution to managing corporate technology, inventory, expenses and services. For more information, visit www.telmantec.com.
