New evidence of lower costs in IT services and support
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29 June 2006
The cost of supporting IT networks is coming down dramatically according to Northern Star, a local IT consultancy company based in West London.
Northern Star claim that a typical network of an SME comprising a server and 15 workstations used to cost £1,000 plus £300 per workstation to support; a total of £5,500 p.a. With the advent of improved remote diagnostics and monitoring software these costs have come down significantly recently and now a small business similar to that described could expect to pay as little as £2,500 for the same service.
The good news does not end there. Everyone is aware that the cost of PCs have dropped but many are not so clear about what they should be paying for their Broadband Internet connections. "These have also come down in cost significantly and if your ISP has not reduced your costs you should be asking some pointed questions" said Fraser Bell, Senior Consultant at Northern Star.
There are major cost saving opportunities in other areas as well reports the company. The launch of Microsoft CRM Small Business Version which is designed to work the way small businesses are used to working (i.e. integrating with Microsoft Outlook and SBS 2003) means that effective customer communications and sales/service management which has been until now only attainable by larger organisations is being made available to SME’s at a price they can afford.
Moving to more efficient ‘paperless’ working is also helping to reduce costs for small businesses. Lavingtons * a practice of Chartered Quantity Surveyors in Richmond is a case in point. Richard Keely a Partner said “he was delighted with the work carried out by Northern Star who have saved his business significant costs for ongoing storage of paper, whilst improving internal and customer communication, which in turn has improved efficiency. We were particularly impressed that we did not have to spend a lot of money to achieve these efficiency gains as we were able to use or existing IT systems, it was just a case of knowing what they were capable of”.
Northern Star are offering a free audit IT expenditure and business efficiency review for West London Businesses to help them identify a range of cost saving opportunities. Call them on 0800 31 96 855 to book your review.
*Lavingtons background
The nature of the business and the industry together with the number of suppliers involved in any project and its complexity means that a significant amount of paper is produced to manage a project.
This presented a particular problem for Lavingtons in that it was difficult to easily retrieve information relevant to a project particularly if a project manager or surveyor was away; people had different ways of working and storing information and the amount of paper being generated was costing the company a significant amount annually in storage costs.
Northern Star in conjunction with Business Link for London were commissioned to reduce the company’s reliance on paper based systems and reduce the cost of paper storage.
At the end of the project Northern Star have enabled Lavingtons to significantly reduce their reliance on paper by better utilizing the existing IT systems in place.
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