How to Spend Your Year-End Budget with a BANG!

Things to consider when spending your remaining budget for the year
Four ways to efficiently spend your remaining year-end budget
Conclusion

As the new year approaches, a lot of us jostle to look for practical ways to spend our remaining budget for the year. With a spare budget comes the thrilling opportunity to implement impactful business strategies for your organization.

Many designated budgets reset in the new year, and the remaining funds do not roll over. Most of the time, budget computations depend on the sum spent in the past year. Thus, many departments hurry at year-end to utilize remaining resources on something meaningful.

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Things to consider when spending your remaining budget for the year

Before deep diving into our recommendation on how to spend your spare budget before the year ends, here are some questions that you have to ask yourself:

What’s your organization’s strategy for the forthcoming year?
Is there a need for supplementary resources, tools, or technologies to make your team more efficient and productive?
What are the windows of opportunity to consolidate operations and automate processes?
Is there an opportunity for your organization to expand rapidly in the upcoming years?

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Four ways to efficiently spend your remaining year-end budget

Don’t let your remaining year-end budget go to waste. You could turn to your teams, but everyone will have varying opinions depending on their role about where the spare budget should go. Remember, the goal is to spend it wisely and in a manner that escalates your organization’s growth.

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Here are some suggestions on how to spend the remainder of your year-end budget wisely:

4. Take on new technology to simplify operation

Year-end is the right moment to take account of your current resources and investigate if there is any inadequacy making your team exert more effort to fulfill their role than needed.

The more you modernize your organization, adopting new technologies must make your employees work more quickly and efficiently. Think about which part of your pipeline needs the most enhancement and adopt a toolkit that reduces roadblocks and challenges.

Upgrading your software infrastructure is also a good excuse to spend your remaining budget with. While a more advanced technology may not be the sole reason to scale productivity, providing cutting-edge tools that streamline processes is an advantage you might want to spend on.

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3. Give presents to your teams

Year-end is an excellent time to show your employees how grateful you are for last year’s hard work. Showing them that you appreciate and acknowledge them helps in building a good relationship with the administration and its workforce. There are several ways to show your team that you care and appreciate them, like holding a year-end party, award ceremony, team building, and thank you gifts.

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2. Rethink your marketing efforts

Take the time to scrutinize your marketing strategies from the past year to recognize what worked, what didn’t, and what needs improvement. It’s also a great opportunity to formulate your marketing plans for the new year. Marketing efforts are a huge part of every organization as it helps in boosting your target audience’s interest in your services.

If you can allocate your remaining budget toward your marketing campaigns, you’re effectively investing for the upcoming year. On top of that, the last quarter of the year is an excellent time to try new advertising ideas.

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1. Invest in professional development opportunities

Last but certainly not least is investing in training and educating your teams to match industry standards. According to the recent Linkedin Workforce Learning Report, more than 25% of employees consider training as one of the most effective ways to encourage workplace satisfaction. Another study showed that companies with motivated employees make 2.5 times the profit, and 87% of those highly-motivated employees are less likely to resign and look for other opportunities.

Honestly, training doesn’t have to be expensive. Even if you have as little as $500 left in your year-end budget, you can still encourage effective training for your teams. Platforms like AppSecEngineer provide cost-effective training programs that show improved results as early as 3 months. From cloud security and Kubernetes security to Threat Modeling and DevSecOps, we have everything you’ll ever need to boost the security skills of your teams. Check out our entire training curriculum here.

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AppSecEngineer also offers:

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Conclusion

Year-ends are always a busy time. You don’t want to spend your remaining budget on wasteful and low-value activities. By focusing on your organization and employee growth, you can make decisions that will put your spare funds to good use. Putting extra dollars into technology that will take some weight off your employees’ shoulders is always a good idea. They are the greatest asset an organization can have, and investing not only in a toolkit that will alleviate their stress but also in their career growth will benefit your organization tremendously.

The new year is just around the corner, so make sure to spend your time and remaining budget wisely.

Source for article

Aneesh Bhargav

Aneesh Bhargav is the Head of Content Strategy at AppSecEngineer. He has experience in creating long-form written content, copywriting, producing Youtube videos and promotional content. Aneesh has experience working in Application Security industry both as a writer and a marketer, and has hosted booths at globally recognized conferences like Black Hat. He has also assisted the lead trainer at a sold-out DevSecOps training at Black Hat. An avid reader and learner, Aneesh spends much of his time learning not just about the security industry, but the global economy, which directly informs his content strategy at AppSecEngineer. When he's not creating AppSec-related content, he's probably playing video games.