Six reasons to spend your budget allocation

04 Dec 2020 | Accessibility

Adam Turner
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As we approach the end of the year, it’s often the last opportunity to spend the remaining parts of the budget that you have been allocated. It is not uncommon for teams to have funds left over to invest; perhaps there is a little left in a particular ‘bucket’, or there is some money that has been kept back for unexpected costs? Sometimes allocations for particular uses such as staff training are not always spent.  

While it may be tempting to not to spend your budget and save some pennies for your organisation, this is not always the best course of action. “Use it or lose it” has become a bit of a cliché, but there are a number of good reasons why you should consider spending most of your allocated budget. Let’s explore six of the key reasons.

  1. It can impact future budget levels

    Everybody loves a team that generates a huge amount of value but does not actually cost that much to run. However, if you run a very modest level of spending one year that is significantly lower than your allocation, then it can create an expectation that this will be the pattern of spending for every year, or feed an assumption that the original budget allocation was too high.

    If you significantly underspend one year it may impact your future budget levels. Digital marketing can be regarded as an overhead and is always a potential area for budget cuts; if you sense that this is the case for the upcoming year, then it may be safer to spend most of your budget rather than to create the impression that digital channels can be run as cheaply every year. 

  2. It’s a tough economic climate

    While everybody hopes that 2021 will be a less difficult year than 2020, it’s still likely to be tough going. The economy continues to be highly fragile and even volatile; this means that there are very likely to be some significant constraints on budgets and investment for the foreseeable future. Therefore, if you do have some unspent budget from this year it is wise to invest it in something useful while you actually have the opportunity; you may be looking at a very different scenario in 2021 or 2022. 

  3. It’s an opportunity to invest in people

    A common area of unspent money is in training budgets; not spending this money is missing out on a significant opportunity to invest in your team. Upskilling your team has multiple benefits, not only in making people more effective in their roles, but also in bringing new areas of skill and knowledge to your team which can also be transferred to other members of staff. Investing in training is also motivating for staff and provides opportunities for personal growth and development, supporting employee engagement. Website management and digital marketing are areas where there are plenty of potential to extend and refine skills in, so not spending an allocated training budget is a real missed opportunity.

  4. A little can go a long way

    Even if you have a very modest amount left in your budget, this can go a surprisingly long way if you spend it on the right thing. The ideal scenario is to invest in something that can contribute to and support any plans you have for 2021, and beyond.

    For example, some organisations have initially used the Sitemorse platform to pay for a one-off automated assessment of website content quality and accessibility compliance at relatively small cost. This has then proved to be the starting point for an improvement project which has resulted in a huge leap forward in levels of accessibility. Even a small investment can have a large impact.

  5. Supporting continuous improvement

    There are always improvements you can make to a website and to a user experience, and a programme of continuous improvement makes that happen. Continuous improvement is as much a mindset as it is a set of processes and actions, helping to ensure digital experiences and content continue to evolve and improve, driving a consistently good and impactful customer experience. Continuous improvement also means you are more likely to move towards accessibility compliance.

    If you are committed to continuous improvement, then you should absolutely spend any budget that you have left, as whatever you spend it on should make a difference.

  6. Supporting other projects

    Even if there is nothing you can think of to spend your allocated budget on, other projects that have a digital marketing or website content element may be able to benefit from it. Digital teams work with a variety of stakeholders across the business; sometimes the budgets which are handled by different departments, teams, projects and initiatives may contribute to pages, microsites, documents, content and even website functionality. It is therefore possible that any unspent budget from the central digital marketing budget could actually contribute to a microsite, better content, or even result in changes or capabilities that can be reused on other parts of the site.

    Sometimes to make a project happen, it may be necessary to combine spend allocated to a particular initiative with any unused central budget, leading to changes that can have a wider impact. The point is that your unspent budget could support another important project.

Use it or lose it!

If you have budget left over, we’d urge you to spend it as everything can make a real difference in improving your website. Give it a little thought, and make every penny count.