As a CFO or financial leader, you’re an expert at scrutinising balance sheets, optimising cash flow, and making sure every rand spent delivers a return. You wouldn’t sign off on a major capital expenditure without understanding the ROI, and you wouldn’t accept a vague, open-ended budget from your marketing department.
So why does IT get a free pass?
Too often, IT spending is treated like a black box. The invoices are a confusing jumble of acronyms and technical jargon, the costs are unpredictable, and it’s nearly impossible to connect the money spent to tangible business outcomes. You’re told it’s all “necessary,” but you have a nagging suspicion that you’re not getting the full story.
It’s time to take back control. You don’t need to be a technical expert to hold your IT provider accountable. You just need to ask the right questions.
Here are three simple yet powerful questions every financial leader should ask their IT provider.
Question 1: “Can you explain your pricing model to me in one sentence?”
This is a test of transparency. If your provider can’t explain their billing in a simple, concise way, it’s a massive red flag. It likely means their model is intentionally complex, designed to hide costs and make it difficult for you to budget effectively.
Listen for answers that are full of “if-thens,” “up-tos,” and vague hourly rates. These are the building blocks of unpredictable invoices.
A good answer sounds like this: “We charge a flat, fixed fee per user or per device, per month. That’s it.”
This is the model we use at Boost. It’s simple, it’s predictable, and it aligns our incentives with yours. We only make money if your systems are running smoothly, because we’re not racking up billable hours every time something breaks. This model forces us to be proactive and build reliable systems from the start.
Question 2: “How does this investment reduce our business risk or increase our revenue?”
This question cuts through the technical jargon and gets to the heart of the matter: business value. Any IT investment should be just that an investment, not just a cost. It should either make your business more resilient or help it grow.
Don’t accept answers like, “We need to upgrade the firewall to the latest firmware.” That’s a feature, not a benefit.
A good answer sounds like this: “By upgrading the firewall, we can better protect you from ransomware attacks, which the data shows could cost the business over R1 million in downtime and recovery fees. This investment directly reduces your financial risk.”
Or, “By implementing this new connectivity solution, we can guarantee 99.99% uptime for your sales team’s CRM, which should translate to a 5% increase in their ability to close deals remotely.”
Every line item on your IT invoice should be justifiable in terms of business impact.
Question 3: “What are you doing to make our IT less expensive over time?”
This is the killer question. The traditional IT model is based on a cycle of break-fix and replacement. Things break, you pay to fix them. Things get old, you pay to replace them. In this model, your costs keep rising.
But a true technology partner should continually seek ways to drive efficiency and reduce your total cost of ownership (TCO). They should be your strategic advisor for simplification.
A good answer sounds like this: “We’ve analysed your mobile data usage, and we believe we can save you 30% by implementing a managed APN solution. Furthermore, by moving these three on-premise servers to a consolidated cloud environment, we can reduce your hardware and electricity costs by R15,000 per month.”
Your IT provider shouldn’t just be maintaining the status quo; they should be actively working to make your business more efficient. They should be bringing you ideas that save you money.
Asking these three questions will transform your relationship with your IT provider. It will shift the conversation from technical details to business value and force a level of transparency and accountability sorely lacking in the industry.
If your current provider struggles to answer them, it might be time to ask one more question: “Why are we still working with you?”
