Colin Middleton continues with the sixth in his eight part series on what business owners and senior management need to know about their IT. This month we look at a sensible approach to ensure you don’t waste money on your IT infrastructure.
Spend Smarter, Not More
A laptop for £400. Another for £900. They both run Windows, they both have a keyboard and screen, and they both let someone access email. So why wouldn’t you buy the £400 one?
It’s a perfectly reasonable question—and exactly why buying IT for a business can be surprisingly difficult.
Good IT purchasing isn’t about buying the most expensive equipment. But equally, buying the cheapest option can sometimes cost considerably more in the long run.
The aim should be simple: buy what your business actually needs and make sure you’re getting value from it.
Repair It or Replace It?
When a computer starts slowing down or developing problems, the natural reaction is often to repair it.
Sometimes that’s absolutely the right decision.
But there comes a point where repeatedly repairing an ageing device becomes a false economy.
Consider the employee using it. If their laptop regularly freezes, takes ten minutes to start or struggles with everyday applications, the cost isn’t just the repair bill—it’s the employee’s lost time.
Spending £200 repairing a laptop might look cheaper than spending £700 replacing it.
But if that employee loses 15 minutes every working day waiting for it, the maths can quickly change.
Sometimes the most economical decision is replacement.
Why the Cheapest Laptop Isn’t Always the Cheapest
Two laptops can look almost identical but perform very differently.
Lower-cost devices may have slower processors, less memory, smaller storage or simply not be designed for eight hours of business use every day.
That doesn’t mean every employee needs an expensive, high-performance computer.
Someone mainly using email and Microsoft Office has very different requirements from somebody working with large spreadsheets, databases or specialist software.
The important thing is to buy for the job rather than simply buying on price.
A slightly more expensive device that lasts four or five productive years can represent much better value than a cheaper one that frustrates its user after two.
Are You Paying for Software Nobody Uses?
Hardware is only part of the picture.
Most businesses now pay monthly or annually for software—Microsoft 365, accounting platforms, HR systems, CRM applications and numerous other subscriptions.
Individually, £10 or £20 per user might not seem significant.
But subscriptions accumulate.
Employees leave but licences remain active. Different departments purchase tools that do similar things. Premium licences are assigned to employees who only use basic features.
Before long, hundreds—or potentially thousands—of pounds can disappear each year on software nobody is actually using.
A simple annual licence review can often identify surprisingly easy savings.
Don’t Forget the Cost of Managing It
The purchase price is only one part of the cost of technology.
There is also the time required to set it up, support it, secure it, update it and eventually replace it.
Buying ten different laptop models because each happened to be cheapest that month might save money initially—but supporting ten different configurations can create unnecessary complexity.
Standardising equipment and software wherever practical makes IT easier to manage and usually reduces support costs.
Consistency has value too.
So What Does Good Value Look Like?
Good value IT isn’t necessarily cheap IT.
It’s technology that’s appropriate for the job, reliable, supported and expected to remain useful for a sensible period of time.
Before making your next IT purchase, don’t just ask:
“How much does it cost?”
Also ask:
“How long will it last, what will it cost to manage, and will it help the person using it work effectively?”
Those questions give you a much better picture of the real cost.
The Bottom Line
Technology is an investment in how your employee’s work.
Spend too little and you can end up paying for it through lost productivity, repairs and early replacement. Spend too much and you may be paying for capabilities your business simply doesn’t need.
The sweet spot is somewhere in between.
You don’t need to spend more on IT. You need to spend smarter.
