WE RECOGNIZE the financial constraints many of our clients are experiencing right now and want to make sure you are aware of the variety of financial solutions we offer to help you maximize cash flow—and allow you to allocate your financial resources where they’re needed most! So, we partnered with our friends at GreaterAmerica, an organization that specializes in the helping businesses find more cost-effective solutions to their IT needs, to host a webinar discussing the trends they are seeing in technology purchasing since COVID-19 started.
In the webinar, we explored different ways businesses could get the IT Support you need without breaking the bank. Although there are many critical aspects of having functioning IT equipment, it is also important that in these stressful times business owners keep their purse strings tight and avoid making costly technology purchases. So, we are sharing with you some of the ways you can purchase the IT equipment you need without spending an arm and leg.
Business technology in 2020
As time goes on and technologies advance, many businesses find themselves using a plethora of tools and devices to help them conduct business more efficiently. These tools can range from the email tools your company chooses to use, to the CRM tool you use to manage most of your business. But overtime, many businesses have realized they are running a lot of different technologies both inside and outside of their offices. These include the hardware you give out to employees, the servers you use for centralized data collection, and the cloud solutions you implement for easy access to organizational data. All of these are considered critical to running a business and if you remove any of them, your operations may be slow down or cease to function at all. These technologies are not cheap and often become outdated after some time. Not only that, but the cost of updating or replacing the technologies will vary depending on how many devices you may need to swap out.
The user management model
The user management model is a term commonly used in the MSP industry, which allows them to easily calculate the cost of services based on the number of users. This allows you to have flexibility on your monthly invoices based on how many people are at your org. Choosing to work with businesses who bill this way will prevent you from paying for inactive users.
Payment Options for Business Technology
As an IT business, we know that there are three primary ways people pay for business technology: cash or checks, loans, or leasing programs. The method of payment is often selected based on the size of the purchase. For example: if you are looking to purchase new Microsoft Office licenses, you may just choose to put it on the company card because the amount associated with that is rather low. BUT if you are looking to purchase several new servers, you may choose to go with a loan or a lease.
When it comes time to make a purchasing decision like this, there are several things to consider: cash flow, credit lines, rate risk, soft cost, upgrades, and tax. See the image below for details on what to consider about each of these before purchasing new tech and for more information about this please feel free to watch the entire webinar and request copies of the slide deck here.
To lease or to loan
Maybe you have already ruled out making the purchase with cash, but are now stuck between choosing a leasing option, or a loan option. No worries, our friends at GreaterAmerica have helped many businesses make this decision. They have put together a handout that addresses 10 frequently asked questions to help you decide on a lease or a loan. If you are interested in hearing a professional opinion and/or our CEO Brian Miller’s take on this, then please request the webinar and full handout here.
