By Jacqueline M. Tiso, Founder and CEO of JMT Consulting Group
As does every leader in a firm, I have to keep watch on how the numbers are doing. Specifically – how is the money coming in and what is it going out for. Probably the strongest message any business leader has heard over the past few years is that cash is king. This is true for every firm, whether for-profit or non-profit.
Given this fact, you can imagine having to spend approximately $20,000 a year on technology – upgrades and maintenance to our servers – is NOT my most happy moment.
The good news? The last time I had to spend this kind of money was in late 2009.
At that time, I realized that I really didn’t like to spend $20,000 a year on hardware and software upgrades – and that money could be much better spent elsewhere.
Think about it: What could you do for your organization with $20,000 of “found” money?
JMT’s mission is to support non-profits in their use of technology, so they can achieve their mission. I realized that I should be applying this philosophy to my own business. And this forced me to ask the question how was spending this money every year on upgrades and maintenance furthering our mission?
I easily realized that spending a significant portion of our operating budget each year on IT infrastructure didn’t support JMT’s mission. And that was the moment our move to the cloud was born. This decision was arrived at after thorough reviews of our entire technology foot print, including not only direct costs such as the annual $20,000 equipment spend, but also electrical, maintenance, security, and of course, the human resources costs.
Our move to the cloud is not 100% complete, but it’s almost done and it has had an amazing impact on our organization in terms of not only dollars, but in the ability to streamline our processes, accessibility, team collaboration, and increased efficiency.
Every non-profit can benefit just as JMT has. If you need help in understanding this changing paradigm and how you organization might benefit, please do call us and I will be happy to share what we’ve done.
