BCM One Blog Insights

Managing IT Contracts: The Bane of IT Business growth is almost always considered a good thing, but growth also brings challenges. As more employees and locations come on board, inevitably there are new demands for technology. With new technology comes new relationships with vendors and partners that provide those services. New products and services mean more IT contracts to manage.  An analysis by Okta Inc. discovered that the number of…

Managing Technology Expenses 101 With the rise in dependence on technology, enterprises are feeling the pinch. Many lack the required visibility into technology inventory and assets. Without transparency, it’s nearly impossible to reduce inefficiencies and costs. Managing technology expenses should be a top priority because the lack of visibility and control puts companies at risk. Technology Expense Management (TEM) isn’t always enough. A Deloitte Global CIO Survey reported that depending…

Reports indicate that at least 85% of companies are now considering investing in SD-WAN, a massive rise from 68% in 2016. Investing in SD-WAN is more than just a trend, however. It's a wise business decision that can improve your entire network's security, performance, and availability at a reasonable price. No matter what type of business you run, working to get the best possible network is always worth the time…

The SD-WAN market is expected to reach a net worth of $6 billion in 2020. The number of businesses adopting the service continues to grow because of the many benefits it provides. Installing a fully managed SD-WAN is one of the best things you can do for your business, especially if it has a large network with high data loads. Its unique features improve security and performance and make life…

A few months ago, life was easy, and your company was doing well. Your workplace functioned like a well-oiled machine...until disaster struck. You, your coworkers, and everybody needing tech support were all thrown into an uncertain, scary world. One of the biggest changes to everyday life is that many now work from home. Everyone is trying to limit losses, but for businesses that weren't remote, to begin with, adapting is especially difficult. These days,…

  What's one of the main overheads of any business operating in 2020? Rent costs? Probably, but there's one thing that's even more universal than that. What could it be, you ask? It's IT costs! This can include anything from frequent monthly payments for software to capital expenses for computers themselves. It's becoming impossible in 2020 to be able to manage a successful major business without thoroughly embracing technology. But…

The costs associated with managing and maintaining the IT infrastructure of a healthcare company can be significant. The concerning IT costs that healthcare companies encounter may come from outside of the business. They can also be caused by the need to move to more advanced and cost-effective technologies. Reviewing the effectiveness of your IT department should be an essential ongoing task. This means working with vendors to ensure that you’re…

Are you managing a rapidly growing business? Are you struggling with various technology problems? The first step to winning against these IT issues lies in understanding their nature. Different IT challenges pose various kinds of problems. The more serious ones can cause significant disruption, even in large companies. IT downtime, for example, costs businesses $1.55 million annually. Thankfully, there are solutions available. But you must first pinpoint what these common problems…

What Are Managed Service Providers? Managed service providers (MSPs) offer different solutions depending on your business objectives. MSPs put in place and manage quality IT services that meet the needs of individual organizations. Benefits of Outsourced IT Service Providers Choosing managed IT services helps lower your costs and secure your digital systems. Moving this burden off of your internal IT team gives your business innovative solutions to help you stay ahead of the competition.…

A third of businesses spend more than 5% of their annual revenue on technology. However, this is a percentage that is steadily rising each year. To keep pushing your business forward, you often need to invest in the latest technology. In addition to this, you will need to periodically replace IT equipment, and upgrade software. This makes it challenging to calculate your IT cost projection. You could base your technology budget on…

Most technology expense management (TEM) tools have the same basic features. They digitize technology invoices, parse data from invoices, automate invoice verification and expense allocation, transmit processed invoice data to client accounting systems, and store invoices electronically. What makes Technology Expense Optimization (TEO) different from traditional TEM are six key capabilities; dynamic inventory management, service level invoice auditing, embedded exception resolution tools, automated multi-level invoice allocation, proactive contracts management, and…

As it stands now, most businesses are highly reliant upon WAN connectivity. This is due to the centralization of applications, services transitioning to the cloud, and an increased reliance on collaboration tools. Businesses deploy MPLS to meet their requirements, but MPLS is costly and challenging to manage. Many administrators believe that MPLS is the only way to provide priority to critical applications using QoS to meet SLAs. The problem with…

The time-consuming nature of controlling and paying technology expenses today makes it challenging to vet them yet still pay them on time. You want assurance that you were billed correctly, but if you take too long to pay, you could risk paying late fees, interest charges, service disruption, and erosion of goodwill between you and your suppliers. Businesses would benefit significantly from more intelligence from all of that invoice processing…

Today’s businesses have far higher bandwidth requirements than they did even a few years ago thanks to high-need applications like SaaS applications, video conferencing, and UCaaS. New bandwidth requirements have made costs skyrocket. Now the old infrastructures are singularly unattractive, but many organizations are unaware that there are better, cheaper alternatives. That’s where SD-WAN comes in. A Software-defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN) is a virtual architecture that enables enterprises to…

Worldwide IT spending reached almost $4 trillion in 2019. You can bet that not every dollar in the bunch was put to its most effective use. Companies are constantly on the lookout for IT cost reduction and optimization strategies as they try to take advantage of all the new innovative solutions as efficiently as possible. Here are 7 strategies you can use to bring costs down and make sure you are getting…

According to Sunny Gupta, CEO of Apptio, "Every CIO has 70-80 percent of their cost structure and IT budget tied into 'run IT', or business as usual, with only 20-30 percent focused on innovation." Many managers wish that they could divert more of their budget to actually improving things or implementing their great ideas, but it's so crucial to keep everything running properly that they end up pushing innovation to the back…

What Is a Software-Defined Wide Area Network? An SD-WAN is a technology used to configure and implement a business's WAN (Wide Area Network). It efficiently optimizes network traffic. Its flexibility offers businesses a solution to slow network traffic.  One of the main characteristics that set SD-WAN apart is that it supports various connections. You can use SD-WAN if you have any of the following connection types: Long-Term Evolution or LTE…

A Gartner report indicated that 40% of infrastructure will utilize SD-WAN systems by the year 2018. SD-WAN is an increasingly popular wide area network technology option. It provides numerous benefits and is easy to integrate into existing systems.  The Transition from WAN to SD-WAN Traditional WAN design is based on multiple devices stacked in the branch office with siloed management and various WAN links connecting them. With a bunch of…