{"id":1538,"date":"2026-09-09T05:13:52","date_gmt":"2026-09-09T10:13:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cmitsolutions.com\/sanmarcos-tx-1047\/?p=1538"},"modified":"2026-09-03T05:33:50","modified_gmt":"2026-09-03T10:33:50","slug":"the-real-cost-of-we-will-figure-it-out-as-we-grow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cmitsolutions.com\/sanmarcos-tx-1047\/blog\/the-real-cost-of-we-will-figure-it-out-as-we-grow\/","title":{"rendered":"The Real Cost of “We Will Figure IT Out As We Grow”"},"content":{"rendered":"

It is a reasonable thing to say<\/b><\/h2>\n

“We will figure IT out as we grow” is not a careless sentence. Most of the time it is the correct call. When you are small and every dollar has three jobs, formalizing technology is genuinely not the highest use of your money. Plenty of good businesses got to where they are by saying exactly that and meaning it.<\/span><\/p>\n

The catch is that the sentence has a shelf life, and it expires quietly. Nothing breaks on the day it stops being true. You just start paying for it somewhere else.<\/span><\/p>\n

This post is about finding that somewhere else, and about putting an actual number on it. The number is usually what settles the argument.<\/span><\/p>\n

Why the cost is invisible rather than absent<\/b><\/h2>\n

Ask most growing businesses what they spend on technology and you will get a confident answer:<\/span> software subscriptions<\/span><\/a>, hardware when something dies, and whatever the last repair bill was. That number is easy to find because it arrives as invoices.<\/span><\/p>\n

The rest of it does not arrive as invoices. It arrives as hours, as delay, and as duplication, which means it never gets counted, which means the informal arrangement always looks cheaper than it is. That is not an accounting failure. It is just that nobody sends you a bill for the report that went out late.<\/span><\/p>\n

The six places the money actually goes<\/b><\/h2>\n

Here is what to look for. You can work through these in an afternoon with your operations lead and a calendar, and you do not need a vendor in the room to do it.<\/span><\/p>\n

The hours your accidental IT person spends<\/b><\/h3>\n

Start here, because it is almost always the largest number and the easiest one to get wrong. Ask the person who handles technology to estimate what share of an average week goes to it. Most people underestimate, because the work arrives in five-minute pieces that do not feel like anything. Then multiply that share by what that person actually costs you per year, salary plus payroll costs plus benefits, not just base.<\/span><\/p>\n

If your operations manager is spending a fifth of their week on technology, you are paying a fifth of an operations salary for the least valuable use of that person’s judgment.<\/span><\/p>\n

The work that did not happen<\/b><\/h3>\n

This one takes honesty rather than arithmetic. Write down the two or three initiatives your operations lead owns that have slipped more than a quarter. Then ask what would have moved them. If the answer is time, and the time went to technology, that project delay belongs in this calculation.<\/span><\/p>\n

Duplicated and forgotten software<\/b><\/h3>\n

Pull twelve months of card statements and highlight every<\/span> recurring technology charge<\/span><\/a>.<\/span> Almost every business doing this for the first time finds at least one subscription nobody uses, one tool that overlaps another tool, and one seat count that never came down after someone left.<\/span><\/p>\n

Break-fix spending, and its shape<\/b><\/h3>\n

Add up what you spent reactively last year. Then look at how it was distributed.<\/span> Reactive technology spending<\/span><\/a> tends to be lumpy, and lumpy is the part that hurts, because a quiet spring followed by a four-figure September is much harder to plan around than the same total spread evenly.<\/span><\/p>\n

Onboarding and offboarding drag<\/b><\/h3>\n

Time how long it actually takes to get a new hire fully working: accounts, access, hardware,<\/span> software, phone<\/span><\/a>. Multiply by how many people you expect to hire this year. Then ask the harder question, which is how long it takes to fully remove access when somebody leaves, and whether anyone confirms it was done.<\/span><\/p>\n

The exposure you are carrying without having priced it<\/b><\/h2>\n

We are not going to hand you a scary statistic here. The honest version is simpler. <\/span>There are things you are currently assuming are handled:<\/span> backups running<\/span><\/a>, backups actually restorable,<\/span> access removed<\/span><\/a> when people leave, critical systems patched.<\/span> Each of those is either verified or assumed. Write down which is which. You cannot budget for a risk you have not yet named, and naming it is most of the work.<\/span><\/p>\n

Add it up before you compare it to anything<\/b><\/h2>\n

Total those six. Do it before you look at any<\/span> provider’s pricing<\/span><\/a>, including ours, because the order matters. If you price managed IT first, every number you find afterward gets judged against it. If you build your own number first, you are comparing two real figures instead of measuring one real figure against one imagined one.<\/span><\/p>\n

Most businesses that go through this exercise are surprised twice. Once by how large the total is, and again by how much of it was time rather than money.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

What changes when the number becomes a planned one<\/b><\/h2>\n

The point of this is not that the informal arrangement is expensive. Sometimes it genuinely is not. The point is that right now the number is unplanned, invisible, and volatile, and those three things are what make it hard to run a business around.<\/span><\/p>\n

A predictable monthly cost does something specific for you. <\/span>It converts a variable you cannot forecast into a line you can budget, defend, and<\/span> take to a board<\/span><\/a> or a director without caveats.<\/span> For the operations leaders we work with, that defensibility is often worth as much as the support itself. They are not just buying help. They are buying a number they can put in a plan and stand behind.<\/span><\/p>\n

Two things we will say plainly, because we hear them asked in every first conversation. There is no long-term contract, and there are no surprise invoices. If the arrangement is not working for you, that should be your decision to make rather than a clause you have to negotiate your way out of. <\/span>Our<\/span> managed IT services page<\/span><\/a> sets out what is actually covered month to month.<\/span><\/p>\n

What this looks like around New Braunfels and San Marcos<\/b><\/h2>\n

Family-owned businesses across New Braunfels, Seguin, San Marcos, and Kyle run into this at a fairly predictable point, usually somewhere between fifteen and forty employees. That is the range where the informal arrangement stops absorbing growth and starts being strained by it.<\/span><\/p>\n

There is a local wrinkle worth naming. When the technology job has been handed down inside a business for years, its cost stops registering as a cost at all. It has always been done this way, so it stops feeling like a decision anybody is currently making. It is one, and it is worth revisiting on purpose.<\/span><\/p>\n

If your business is somewhere in that range and the phrase at the top of this post sounds like something you have said recently, it may simply be time to check the math.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Want a second set of eyes on the number<\/b><\/h2>\n

CMIT Solutions of San Marcos & New Braunfels offers a free thirty-minute IT assessment. We will walk through what technology is actually costing your business today, including the parts that never make it onto an invoice, and give you a straight answer about whether a change is worth making. If the honest answer is that you are fine for now, we will tell you that.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Frequently Asked Questions<\/h2>\n
\n
\n1. What is the real cost of saying \u201cwe will figure IT out as we grow\u201d?+<\/span><\/summary>\n
The real cost can include employee time, delayed projects, unused software, emergency repair expenses, slow onboarding, and cybersecurity risks that never appear on a traditional IT invoice.<\/div>\n<\/details>\n
\n2. Why do growing businesses underestimate their IT costs?+<\/span><\/summary>\n
Many IT costs are hidden inside employee hours, lost productivity, project delays, and duplicated tools rather than appearing as direct technology expenses.<\/div>\n<\/details>\n
\n3. When does informal IT management stop working?+<\/span><\/summary>\n
Informal IT management often becomes difficult when a business adds more employees, devices, applications, accounts, and security responsibilities than internal staff can comfortably manage.<\/div>\n<\/details>\n
\n4. What are the hidden costs of DIY IT support?+<\/span><\/summary>\n
Hidden costs include staff time spent troubleshooting, delayed business initiatives, redundant software subscriptions, break-fix expenses, onboarding delays, and unmanaged security risks.<\/div>\n<\/details>\n
\n5. How can a business calculate its true IT costs?+<\/span><\/summary>\n
Businesses should review employee time spent on IT, delayed projects, software subscriptions, reactive repair costs, onboarding and offboarding time, and unverified security or backup processes.<\/div>\n<\/details>\n
\n6. Why should employee time be included in IT costs?+<\/span><\/summary>\n
When managers or other employees spend time solving IT problems, the business is paying for those hours while losing time that could have been spent on higher-value responsibilities.<\/div>\n<\/details>\n
\n7. What is an accidental IT person?+<\/span><\/summary>\n
An accidental IT person is an employee whose main role is not technology but who gradually becomes responsible for troubleshooting, accounts, devices, software, and other IT tasks.<\/div>\n<\/details>\n
\n8. How can IT responsibilities affect an operations manager\u2019s productivity?+<\/span><\/summary>\n
Frequent IT interruptions can delay reports, projects, process improvements, client follow-ups, and other operational work the manager was originally hired to perform.<\/div>\n<\/details>\n
\n9. How do unused software subscriptions increase technology costs?+<\/span><\/summary>\n
Businesses may continue paying for inactive users, overlapping software, forgotten subscriptions, or tools that employees no longer use.<\/div>\n<\/details>\n
\n10. How often should businesses review software subscriptions and licenses?+<\/span><\/summary>\n
Software should be reviewed regularly, especially during annual renewals and whenever employees join or leave the company.<\/div>\n<\/details>\n
\n11. What is break-fix IT support?+<\/span><\/summary>\n
Break-fix support is a reactive approach where a business pays for technology assistance only after a system, device, or network problem occurs.<\/div>\n<\/details>\n
\n12. Why can break-fix IT become expensive for growing businesses?+<\/span><\/summary>\n
Reactive support can lead to unpredictable repair bills, downtime, emergency service costs, and disruptions that become more expensive as the business grows.<\/div>\n<\/details>\n
\n13. What are the hidden IT costs of employee onboarding?+<\/span><\/summary>\n
Onboarding requires time for hardware setup, account creation, software installation, permissions, phone configuration, security settings, and troubleshooting.<\/div>\n<\/details>\n
\n14. Why is IT offboarding important when an employee leaves?+<\/span><\/summary>\n
Offboarding ensures former employees lose access to company email, files, applications, devices, and other systems, reducing unnecessary cybersecurity exposure.<\/div>\n<\/details>\n
\n15. How can a business know whether its backups are reliable?+<\/span><\/summary>\n
Backups should be monitored and regularly tested for successful restoration. A backup that has never been tested should not automatically be assumed to be recoverable.<\/div>\n<\/details>\n
\n16. What cybersecurity risks can informal IT management create?+<\/span><\/summary>\n
Risks can include unpatched systems, forgotten accounts, weak access controls, untested backups, inconsistent security practices, and vulnerabilities that nobody is actively monitoring.<\/div>\n<\/details>\n
\n17. How do managed IT services make IT spending more predictable?+<\/span><\/summary>\n
Managed IT services can combine monitoring, maintenance, support, cybersecurity, backups, and other services into a planned monthly expense rather than unpredictable emergency costs.<\/div>\n<\/details>\n
\n18. When does managed IT make financial sense for a growing business?+<\/span><\/summary>\n
Managed IT may make sense when the combined cost of employee time, downtime, reactive repairs, delayed work, and security risks becomes greater than the cost of structured professional support.<\/div>\n<\/details>\n
\n19. Why do businesses in New Braunfels and San Marcos outgrow informal IT support?+<\/span><\/summary>\n
As businesses across New Braunfels, San Marcos, Seguin, and Kyle add employees and technology, informal processes can become harder to maintain and increasingly dependent on individual staff members.<\/div>\n<\/details>\n
\n20. What happens during a free IT assessment?+<\/span><\/summary>\n
An IT assessment reviews current technology spending, systems, backups, cybersecurity, support processes, software, and hidden operational costs to help determine whether the existing IT approach still makes financial sense<\/div>\n<\/details>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\"CMIT<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is a reasonable thing to say “We will figure IT out…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1009,"featured_media":1539,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[26,22,32,24],"class_list":["post-1538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-it","tag-business-it-support-san-marcos","tag-business-it-support-san-marcos-new-braunfels","tag-cybersecurity-services-san-marcos-new-braunfels","tag-t-support-managed-services-san-marcos-new-braunfels"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t