4 Ways to Relieve Time-Pressure Costs
Corporate IT teams are under a lot of pressure to reduce costs in the short term without increasing incidents, service requests, escalations, and delays. This might seem like an insurmountable task, but we have seen countless customers take effective cost-saving measures without sacrificing their users’ digital experiences.
Here are 4 of the most common IT costs our customers have fixed:
1. Under/Over-Provisioning Hardware
IT wastes millions splashing cash on new devices nobody needs and under/over-provisioning hardware. Too many in IT rely on a ‘one-and-done’ refresh cycle. When an employee’s laptop is 3 years old, for example, IT might swap the laptop out for a shiny new device without taking a hard look at the actual usage, performance, and perception from the user.
Did you know?
- From a sample of 1.38M old generation devices (+3 years old), Nexthink found that just 2% needed to be replaced with new hardware!
- Nexthink estimates that 70% of devices have the potential of right-sizing, which translates to a cost savings benefit of $50 per refreshed device!
A single hardware refresh might cost somewhere between $1000 and $2000 – and if you’re providing service for hundreds or thousands of digital workers, the overall cost can quickly add up to millions of dollars.
We’ve helped IT departments retain, upgrade, and replace their old hardware by zeroing in on key usage metrics, performance, and user feedback.
Retain (Leave it!)– devices that have good technical performance and employee satisfaction scores.
Upgrade (A simple fix!) – devices that require a straight-forward and easy hardware upgrade, like a memory or disk space upgrade.
Replace (Trash it & buy new!) – devices that have poor technical performance, employee feedback, and are beyond saving.
2. Unused Software Licenses
Most employees today have dozens of corporate applications installed that they don’t even use or want. Okta estimates that IT teams manage an average of 170+ Enterprise apps in large organizations and 70+ in small and medium businesses.
What’s alarming is that many in IT still manually track their licenses. Counting licenses is a time-consuming task that can quickly get messy when you factor in siloed IT teams and business owners. And what about software and asset management tools? Or vendor-provided information (like in the case of SaaS apps)? The former is riddled with accuracy issues due to information gaps arising from changes to employee needs and usage. And the latter depends on the vendor, some lack the type of data and service required for an exhaustive and comprehensive audit.
Did you know?
- SaaS subscriptions make up 70% of total company software use and in the past six years, annual SaaS contract values have increased by 5x!
- We estimate that on average, general-use applications cost $90 per seat per year, and specialist software costs $1,125.
- Our customers save 10% per seat on general-use applications & 20% per seat on specialist software.
We’ve cut costs for IT teams by measuring and metering what matters most: real employee usage-based metrics and sentiment. Our solution unlocks key variables like utilization by user, time of utilization, and usage pattern, so that IT can identify users not using licenses, engage with them, and remove their seats, if necessary. In addition, our usage-based solution enables IT to quickly re-allocate recovered licenses to users that would benefit from having those tools.
3. Bloated Service Desk Costs
Many service desks are susceptible to volatile response times and associated costs because they’ve been built to react to, rather than prevent, incidents and tickets. Of course, some technology issues are unpredictable and unavoidable, but the service desk should still have the means to automate fixes when those instances occur.
Did you know?
- Forrester found that with Nexthink, Level 1 and Level 2 end-user support teams make efficiency gains of 10% to 20%, resulting in a three-year, risk-adjusted PV of $5.2M.
- One of our customers, a US Hospital, was able to save $1.7M in support time using our unique telemetry data and integration with ServiceNow.
Our customers have managed to drive down service desk costs in a number of ways using:
Preventive maintenance (Problem avoidance) – identifying latent issues and intervening quickly via integrations with ITSM, chatbots, HR & security systems, etc.
Self-healing (Call elimination) – deploying automations to avoid top call drivers.
Self-service (Call deflection) – deflecting incidents via contextual self-help. Customers can engage with users to fix their issues before they call the service desk.
Assisted Services (Improve efficiencies) – improving efficiency and reducing MTTR by quickly identifying latent issues, validating velocity and volume, and automating SOPs for Top Call Drivers.
4. Slow and/or Delayed Digital Transformation Projects
There’s a strange love/hate relationship with digital transformation ideas and business executives. In theory, everyone agrees that a faster, smarter, safer technology or service is a good thing. But when it comes time to implement that new project, things can go south fast.
Did you know?
- The Boston Consulting group estimates that only 30% of companies navigate a digital transformation successfully.
- Our customers receive, on average, a 28% reduction in their project timelines, and a 95% reduction in P1 issues. (‘P1’ is classified as a complete business down situation or critical system down with high financial consequence).
IT leaders must tackle in no short order:
- A lack of user awareness & resistance to change & learn.
- Agile & micromanagement hell (some might say those are two in the same!).
- Hidden delay costs and not-so-supportive support from vendors.
- Time spent analyzing the technical bits and bobs (i.e. problems with code), versus keeping the overall project on track.
- Articulating how the project aligns with business outcomes.
- Keeping the Executive team, employees, the rest of IT, and every living, breathing individual under the sun happy.
- And, let’s be honest, there are likely dozens of other random and unpredicted challenges.
Thankfully, our customers have been able to squash these challenges because they have end-to-end visibility into their employees’ devices and software usage data. In addition, our direct engagement solutions (like automated alerts, on-screen employee notifications, and DEX scoring) make it possible for them to accurately calculate complicated readiness assessments and track user adoption.
One step at a time?
Hopefully the tips and stories above will inspire you on your next cost-saving mission. Without a solution like ours, you’ll likely have to address each cost separately, one at a time. Or you can resolve all your cost challenges simultaneously in one comprehensive platform, with us.