Planning Your IT Budget for 2025

IT Budgeting: Finding the Right Balance

When approaching an IT budget, many people see IT as just another cost. While it’s essential to be mindful of expenses, IT should be viewed as both an investment and a cost. Effective technology investments may not yield immediate profits, but they can deliver long-term benefits in efficiency, productivity, and risk reduction.

Consider this balance when working with executives or stakeholders, who might naturally lean toward minimizing costs. For example, investing in cybersecurity could seem costly upfront, but it helps prevent expensive disruptions. Avoiding incidents can justify the investment, even if the ROI isn’t instantly visible.

Aligning IT Spending with Business Goals

Before creating a budget, assess your company’s overall goals. Is rapid expansion on the horizon? Are you opening new offices, onboarding more clients, or scaling teams? Or is growth steady and manageable? Fast-growing companies may need to allocate more resources to ensure IT infrastructure and support keep pace, while a slower growth rate might allow for a more conservative budget.

Budget alignment with business goals ensures your technology strategy supports your company’s path, adapting resources and priorities as needed.

Identifying One-Time vs. Recurring Costs

IT budgets generally include both one-time and recurring expenses:

• One-Time Costs: These are typically project-based expenses, such as hardware replacements, major software upgrades, or cabling projects. For instance, with Windows 10 reaching end-of-life in 2025, replacing any remaining Windows 10 machines is likely to be a one-time cost for many companies.

• Recurring Costs: Subscriptions for software like Adobe and Microsoft, ongoing IT support, and cybersecurity services all fall under recurring costs. These expenses are essential to keeping your systems running efficiently and securely over time.

Understanding these two categories can help you budget more accurately and avoid unexpected expenses.

Build in a Buffer for Unanticipated Needs

Adding a 5-10% buffer to your IT budget is wise, especially for emergencies or unexpected growth. A buffer can help cover costs if critical hardware fails, a cybersecurity incident occurs, or if you experience rapid growth that requires immediate technology upgrades. By planning for the unexpected, you can avoid disruptions and ensure continuity.

A Sample IT Budget: Structuring Your 2025 Costs

For example, let’s consider a 25-person company. A basic 2025 budget might look something like this:

• One Time
  • 10 Workstations – $10,000
  • Replace Wireless Network – $4,000
• Recurring IT Costs
  • 25 Workstations IT/Cybersecurity – $40,000
  • 25 Email Licenses – $3,750
  • 5 Adobe Licenses – $1,800
  • 25 Phones – $6,000
  • Spectrum Internet – $2,400
• Buffer 
  • 5% of Total Budget – $4,050

Total 2025 Budget – $72,000

This basic plan, plus a 5% buffer, might amount to $72,000 for the year. For ComTech clients, planning is even simpler. We provide monthly hardware lifecycle reports and other insights to help spread out upgrades across quarters, making financial planning more manageable. Instead of purchasing machines every four years, consider Hardware as a Service (HaaS) for a more predictable, easy to manage solution for your business.