Jeff Wuorio wrote a great article in Microsoft Small Business Center on 7 ways technology saves money. I'm quoted in it on my experience saving small businesses money.
The article is for small business and large businesses, but smaller businesses will benefit the most since they do not have in-house IT staff or very small ones. When working as a small business consultant in New York City, I found a common theme among small business owners: they're frugal! Not a big surprise of course, but I was surprised at how narrow they would focus on saving money.
For example: paper. Paper is expensive. Fancy paper is more expensive. Rolls of paper for plotters are even more expensive. And printing in color is ridiculously expensive. Print management software works great for businesses like architects who bill their clients for printing, but often overkill for small businesses trying to aggressively control who prints what and when. I've seen paper locked in a cabinet, requiring the business owner to personally unlock and approve of it's use. I've seen companies requiring to print on the other side of used paper.
Another example is software licensing. It is expensive and because it is so easy to illegally install software, many companies do it. I don't know how small business owners sleep at night when 90% of their software is illegal. They could lose their business! I worked for a client that had illegal copies of Adobe Creative Suite 3 (CS3) on 9 of 10 computers. They used it as part of their business, thus profiting from it. This small business owner spent a decent amount of time working out who would get the 1 of 10 legal copies and who would get the illegal copies. The small business owner would spend far too much time on this, focusing on saving money the wrong way.
As you can see, saving money requires time. Your IT services provider should be able to quickly and enthusiastically point out ways to save money.
