In a recession, it’s natural to want to audit your entire company and assess where the money is going in order to make effective cuts and reach the highest productivity levels.

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To move towards a place of good financial health in your company, you need to eliminate certain expenses and - if necessary - re-invest them in areas with a greater ROI.

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In this guide, we’ll walk through some core tech services that could be costing you more than you can afford to pay in an economic recession.

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Cloud-based Services

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One of the first places you should look when it’s time to make cuts to your tech stack is any cloud-based services you use.

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Why?

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Because cloud-based services can often take up a significant amount of your budget, and you might not need to pay so much. Of course, if you have a lot of sensitive data and customer information locked in cloud-based storage, then you may have to look elsewhere to make cuts.

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However, if you aren’t using the full capacity of your cloud-based services, you may be able to 

scale down to save money and still benefit from them.

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For instance, if you rely on Dropbox for storing and sharing files, ask whether the plan you’re currently on offers more data than you could feasibly use. If so, you might want to consider dropping down to the cheaper plan, with a view to upgrading the moment you need to. This could save you money in the short term and doesn’t have to hinder your ability to scale.

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Other options include searching for a cheaper cloud-based alternative, or switching to a hybrid approach to data storage so you aren’t 100% reliant on the cloud.

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Marketing Solutions

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Your budget for marketing will include the apps you pay for to source leads or post paid ads to generate traffic or sales from search engines.

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With a recession on the horizon, now is as good a time as any to evaluate the ROI you have with your various forms of marketing. 

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Are you seeing a healthy return on ad spend, or does it seem like you’re hemorrhaging money?

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While marketing is essential to growth and customer or client acquisition, there could be more affordable ways to get the word out about your business that don’t involve costly subscriptions. 

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For instance, you could shift from relying on PPC (pay-per-click) ads to trying SEO (search engine optimization) content marketing which could be more cost-effective - especially if you can do it internally.

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There are also several free tools you can use to research keywords and drive traffic to your website, so a marketing rethink could help you cut down on your tech stack and get better results.

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Project Management Tools

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Project management platforms can be the glue that holds your day-to-day operations together.

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They can allow your team to communicate and collaborate together on projects, and give you an easy way to plan out projects and manage your resources effectively.

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If you’ve reached the point where you’re evaluating your tech stack for cost-cutting opportunities, the project management solution/s you use could provide a potential solution.

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One of the biggest factors in budgetary decisions - in both a professional and personal context - is the sunk cost fallacy. This is the idea that just because you’ve used something up until now and paid a lot of money for it, you have to continue to use it moving forwards.

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If you let go of this idea for a moment, you can reflect on what features of the project management solution you actually use. With a better idea of how you use the software, you might find that you can drop down to the more affordable plan.

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Alternatively, you could come to the realization that the software you use includes more features that you need and as such is eating into your budget without offering a high ROI. In this case, you might want to consider going back to the drawing board and seeing if there is a cheaper option available.

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One of the best features to look out for heading into a recession is resource and capacity management. These features can help you allocate labor and budget appropriately, so you can save both time and money on future projects.

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Analytics 

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If you pay for expensive workforce analytics solutions that provide you with a wealth of data - some of which you don’t actually need - you could make this area a focus of your tech stack hitlist.

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What is computer monitoring software?

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Computer monitoring software provides you with tools and metrics to measure employee performance so you can do everything from evaluating outsourced team performance to analyzing productivity for programmers.

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Insightful is software companies use to monitor employees when they’re looking for discretion - as it ranks highly in computer surveillance software reviews from companies like Forbes - and allows you to take full control of your workforce analytics.

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For many companies, having a finger on the pulse of employee productivity levels is crucial for performance evaluations and making positive changes. As such, we don’t advocate for dispensing with your analytics tools if they clearly have an impact.

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The cheapest employee monitoring software could be one solution to cut costs, or you could look to get more from the solution you turn to.

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If all you get from your employer’s monitoring employee computer use solution is static data, you could stand to gain a lot. With offline employee monitoring software like Insightful, you can collect real-time data from your employees to build a clear picture of performance over time.

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With built-in time tracking, Insightful allows you to monitor employee activity on an hour-by-hour basis, so you can see what apps and websites they visit. Not only can this help you generate accurate productivity reports, but it can also help you audit your current tech list.

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For example, if you find that employees aren’t using Microsoft Word for written documents, even though you have a Microsoft 365 subscription, this could be a red flag. Perhaps they’re using an alternative solution that isn’t currently approved by the IT department like Google Docs.

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In this case, it might be worth sitting down with your team to discuss the benefits of each, and if you find that a free alternative like Google Docs works just as well, why not make the transition to save money?

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