Artificial Intelligence took the public imagination by storm in the 2020s with the launch of a ground-breaking generative pre-trained transformer, GPT-3. People were justifiably impressed with its ability to adapt and mimic human language, and the ensuing AI boom, accelerated by the even more impressive GPT-4 in 2023, saw hundreds of applications for generating written content, images, researching financial questions, planning holidays, and more.  

The ever-changing business landscape can leave IT departments feeling like they're constantly playing catch-up. New technologies emerge, priorities shift, and the pressure to stay relevant intensifies. But amidst the chaos, one constant remains: the need for a healthy IT budget.  The good news? You don't have to choose between innovation and financial responsibility. Here are some key strategies to optimize your IT budget and achieve your goals: 

Small to medium-sized enterprises are under constant pressure to enhance productivity, streamline operations, drive growth, and keep their teams working together. It used to be there weren’t any quick or easy solutions to doing all this at once.   For example, you could hire more staff, but the added expense could erode the benefits of your growth. Or you could streamline operations by making a few people do more work, but that would pose a huge risk to productivity.   With artificial intelligence arriving on the scene, SMEs now have choices to do all of this. AI has the potential to give each team help where they need it the most to help them work more efficiently and effectively doing what they were hired to do. 

Legacy issues, inconsistency through business change, knowledge gaps and key-person syndrome are common factors which can contribute to an organisation’s IT health. This was the case for one of NSP’s clients. The organisation reached out to NSP in 2023 to provide an initial independent IT audit. This included a deep dive into its IT infrastructure and critical business systems to identify any weaknesses, risk, exposure and opportunities. Following the audit and continued partnership building, NSP has provided user support and managed services, including server maintenance, data backup and network and endpoint security, and ongoing training since December 2023. We interviewed IT Operations Manager at the association.

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