How Mathe Has Reduced Expenses For Clients During COVID-19
Looking for ways to “tighten the belt” as the COVID-19 pandemic continues? Discover how Mathe is reducing expenses both internally and for our network of clients.
Over the course of the past eleven months, the escalation of the COVID-19 pandemic has had devastating effects on the US and the global economy. Earlier in the pandemic, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell more than 800 points, and an estimated 30 million American jobs have been lost in the process.
Nowhere is this damage being felt more acutely than in small business markets. During a relatively short period of lowered or altogether halted activity from customers and clients, these small businesses have had to lay staff members off, make significant changes to their services, and dip into their savings.
Is your business struggling? The good news is that there is hope — as your business’ leader, you can take steps and strategize your survival for the recession right now. Consider implementing some of the practices listed below, which helped us and our clients to reduce expenses.
How Are We Reducing Expenses Internally?
Like any business, we have felt the pressure to reduce our costs during the pandemic. Here are two key ways we have done so:
- Work-From-Home: While we have not reduced our personnel expenses, we have downsized our office by pivoting to a work-from-home model — based on the capabilities we have maintained and the cost-savings we have achieved, we will most likely not go back to the large office when the pandemic is over.
- Cloud Consolidation: We have also optimized our cloud deployments for ourselves by examining server sprawl, and identifying opportunities for consolidation of our servers. We have transitioned a majority to SSD, allowing us to, in some cases, reduce other resources and maintain the same performance, all while saving money and reducing rack space.
How Are Mathe Clients Reducing Their Expenses?
Similarly, our clients have made an effort to reduce their own expenses internally in the following ways:
- Work-From-Home: Many of our clients have eliminated unneeded office space and embraced work-from-home (especially for non-customer-facing work).
- Personnel Optimization: Like many businesses across the country, our clients have had to furlough or temporarily lay off a portion of their staff. When possible, they have brought back select members when it was both safe and financially viable to do so. This gave them the opportunity to better determine how many staff members are necessary to maintain their services and productivity.
How Is Mathe Reducing Expenses For Clients?
Like any service provider, we have felt pressure from our clients to further optimize their IT budgets. We did so in the following ways:
- Cloud Consolidation: Just like we did for ourselves, we also worked with our clients to reduce server sprawl and unneeded infrastructure expenses. We re-evaluated all of the various servers, consolidated shares, retired servers that were only for look back, and moved them in-house or simply migrated the necessary information out of them.
- Re-Evaluating Software Licensing: We also examined our clients’ application licensing to determine if they still required that many after reducing their personnel. We also explored new applications that may have the features and functionality they use more expensive versions for. If we identified an opportunity for them to save money, we managed the subsequent migration.
Cut Your IT Costs With Mathe
It should be noted that no single solution is going to make a major difference in your budget. This is especially true for organizations maintaining their user base while pivoting to work-from-home. While you may save some money by reducing your need for office space, your IT costs will be the same, or even increase slightly due to the expense and challenges of protecting them remotely.
If you’re looking for ways to optimize your IT budget during the pandemic, get in touch with the Mathe team. We can evaluate your current budget and help you identify opportunities to cut costs.
With over 35 years in the business of supporting and implementing technology for the SME market, and 6 years previously in Corporate IT and Voice. I have seen a great deal of change. The only common thread is I have always focused on the Business Wise application of Technology. We always try to look 5 years ahead of the current technology to make sure our clients are on the right track to meet current and future needs.
