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Establishing an IT Budget for a Small Business?
tirthas asks: "I am the Information Manager of a small (20 person) architecture firm and have recently been asked by my employer to prepare a technology spending budget. While I have a good handle on what I would like to spend vs. what I must spend, I am having some difficulty establishing a justifiable budgeting method. I have seen examples of 'per employee' methods and 'percentage of revenue' methods, but the dollars and percentages vary widely. What methods do you use to establish your departmental/company-wide budgets, what are your monetary amounts or percentages, and what successes or failures did you have in establishing your budgets?"
Wow... this is a whole can of worms. You're not going to get an appropriate answer on semi-anonymous web forum. I operate my own technology consulting firm who specializes (coincidently enough) in professional service firms such as yours. I earn my living, in part, by answering these types of questions.
I'll need to know the current technological state of your company. How close to capacity is your IT dept running, both in manpower and equipment/services? What are your company's growth expecations over the next two years? 5-10 years? In what role does your company see the IT department, cost center or profit center? In the case of the former, how might we turn that around? How does your utilization of technology come to others in your industry? Etc, etc...
Take the sound bites that you're going to get here with a grain of salt. You're going to need answers that are specific to your business itself. I know it's probably not what you want to hear, but you really should call in some outside help so you can learn how to do it right. Patching together piecemeal advice might cost you your job in the end.
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At my company (14 employees-ish) the budgest for IT is just "Find out what we need, buy it, and give us the reciepts". Seriously. Our IT guy just does what he has to, and justifies it when asked about it. If he can't justify it, he either gets limits on what he can spend next month, or it gets returned for something cheaper. With small companies with extremely variable budgets (months our company actually get PAID result in much higher IT purchases), it's best to take it one month at a time, and document reasons for EVERYTHING!
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Don't stop with PC's and applications. Include phones, Internet access, printers, faxes, document repositories, paper, toner, CD's, you name it. If the business strategy is best supported by quill pens and parchment paper, though, don't be afraid to go low-tech.
The partners probably have an idea of how much they want to spend on you, your team, and what you and your team do. Find out.
Do not trifle with that step. If they think they can afford $30,000 a year on technology and you present a $300,000 budget, the next sound you hear will be the axe falling.
Never forget that your firm is in the business of architecting things. Having cool computers with the latest applications that do not contribute directly and measurably to the architecting of things is deadly.
First, ignore all the per-capita methods. They won't work.
Now, take your lists of what you need to spend and what you want to spend. Lay out the items, give each one a priority ranging from "must have" to "would be nice". Provide a justification for each one and for the priority you gave it. Give all justifications, not just the best one, with examples from reality (eg. the justification for the anti-virus software might make reference to actual virus infestations in the company in the previous year and how much they cost in money, time and resources). Be sure to account for recurring costs in future years (eg. the service contracts on equipment, anti-virus update services, etc.).
Once you've got your list, sit down with the Finance guys and figure out how far down the list the business can afford to go.
Realistic budgets aren't based on per-capita expenditures or percentages of revenues or profits, they're based on what the business actually needs to spend to stay in business.