PTS Managed Services · Hong Kong
The IT budget benchmark & cost planner
"How much should IT cost us?" has a real answer: a band, not a number. Tell the planner who you are and it shows the market benchmark for a business like yours, what a healthy budget looks like inside, and, if you tell it what you spend today, where you sit and why. This is general planning for your whole operational IT budget, built on cited public benchmarks. It is not PTS pricing anything, and it is not a quote.
Pick your situation, then enter the basics on the Overview tab; the band, the structure and the verdict rebuild as you type.
Start here
Showing for Planning next year · 30 people · Other / mixed · unregulated, cloud-first, single site"How much should IT cost?" has a real answer: a band, not a number. Tell the planner who you are and it shows the market benchmark for a business like yours, how a healthy budget is structured, and, if you enter what you spend today, where you sit and why.
Anchor on the band, then build bottom-up: refresh units counted, renewals listed with dates, projects separated from run, contingency funded. A budget assembled that way survives its first contact with the CFO, and the checklist tab is the assembly order.
Next: the budget hygiene checklist →
PTS runs IT for Hong Kong businesses across every line of this structure. The review is an engineer reading your estate, not a sales call.
From band to budget
- A free budget review: your actuals mapped to the six-line structure, benchmarked, with the waste and the gaps named
- Next year's number built bottom-up: refresh counted, renewals calendared, projects separated, contingency funded
- The two biggest slices made predictable: licence rightsizing and support under one agreement
Budget hygiene checklist
Showing for Planning next year · 30 people · Other / mixed · unregulated, cloud-first, single siteAnswer from what you actually know. "Not sure" is a perfectly good answer, and usually the honest one about a budget. Your answers build the assessment on the next tab and stay in this browser unless you send them.
The basics
What's inside
Your budget picture
Showing for Planning next year · 30 people · Other / mixed · unregulated, cloud-first, single sitePlanning next year · 30 people · Other / mixed · unregulated, cloud-first, single site
What you'll likely need
Built from your profile; each item says why it's there. This is a starting agenda, not a quote: the free review turns the band into your actual number.
Free IT budget review
Your actuals mapped against the six-line structure and the benchmark band, with the gaps, the waste and next year's number, costed properly.
Because: the benchmark shows the band; the review shows your number.
Licence rightsizing (start with Microsoft)
The software slice is the fastest-growing line and the easiest to shrink. The M365 Plan Picker builds the right-sized mix at list prices in five minutes.
Because: software & SaaS is typically ~27% of the budget, and rightsizing routinely cuts 10–30% of it.
Hardware refresh, procured properly
Next year's refresh units specified, competitively sourced and scheduled, so the lumpiest line becomes the most predictable.
Because: refresh is the most plannable spend in IT once someone counts the units.
Managed IT at a predictable monthly cost
The people-and-support slice as one agreement with known scope: the budget line that stops moving.
Because: at your size, support-as-a-service is usually how the biggest slice becomes predictable.
Get your free budget review
Send this to PTS and within two business days we'll come back to arrange a free, engineer-led budget review: your actuals mapped to the six-line structure and benchmarked, then next year's number built bottom-up. Your profile and answers are attached automatically.
The benchmarks, by profile
Showing for Planning next year · 30 people · Other / mixed · unregulated, cloud-first, single siteTotal IT budget per person per month, all-in, with the %-of-revenue cross-check where it's meaningful. These are market ranges describing what businesses typically budget across all their IT costs, whoever provides them.
| Profile | Tier | Per person / month | Typical % of revenue |
|---|---|---|---|
| Financial services / funds | Elevated | HK$1,800–HK$3,500 | 7–10% |
| Legal & professional services | Elevated | HK$1,800–HK$3,500 | 4–7% |
| Family office | Elevated | HK$1,800–HK$3,500 | n/a |
| Technology | Elevated | HK$1,800–HK$3,500 | 8–12% |
| Trading & manufacturing | Baseline | HK$700–HK$1,400 | 2–4% |
| Retail & F&B | Baseline | HK$700–HK$1,400 | 1.5–3% |
| Other / mixed | Typical | HK$1,200–HK$2,200 | 3–7% |
Bands before adjustments: regulation (+~20%), owned servers (+~12%), multiple sites (+~15%) and very small headcounts (+~15%) move a business up within or beyond them; scale past ~150 people moves it down. Highlighted row = your selection.
Sources: revenue percentages anchored to Flexera's published per-industry figures (financial services ~10%, industrial ~4%) and cross-industry averages of ~5–6%; per-head bands sit inside the published SMB envelope of roughly US$1,000–5,000 per employee per year, adjusted for Hong Kong cost structures by PTS. Full citations on the Sources tab.
Businesses spending well under their band are usually deferring the refresh cycle, skipping the security slice, or not seeing the card-expensed SaaS tail. The gap tends to be repaid in one bad week, at panic prices. The useful question isn't "how low can it go"; it's "is every line deliberate".
Benchmarks are the start, not the answer
- The free review turns the band into your number: actuals mapped, waste named, next year built bottom-up
- Where you're above the band: licence true-downs and consolidation first, service levels last
- Where you're below it: the deferred-risk list, priced calmly instead of mid-incident
What a healthy budget looks like inside
Showing for Planning next year · 30 people · Other / mixed · unregulated, cloud-first, single siteSix lines cover nearly everything. The shares below are the typical SME shape; your mix will differ, but a budget missing one of these lines isn't lean, it's incomplete.
internal IT staff and/or the managed-support agreement, the largest single slice in nearly every benchmark
Microsoft 365, line-of-business apps and the SaaS tail. The fastest-growing slice, and the one rightsizing recovers from
laptops, screens and network kit on a 3–5 year refresh cycle. Lumpy unless you plan it
Azure/AWS, file storage, backup capacity
internet circuits, SD-WAN, cross-border links where they apply
training, testing and insurance-driven controls. A small slice, the first thing cut and the worst thing to cut
5–10% on top, funded and untouched until the year's surprise arrives: a failed switch, an acquisition, a regulation, a price increase. Every year has one; budgets that pretend otherwise just fund it from the refresh cycle and pay twice later.
Structure, applied to your estate
- Your actuals sorted into the six lines, including the shadow SaaS the card statements hide
- The licence slice rightsized (start with the M365 Plan Picker; finish with the review)
- Refresh turned from lumpy surprise into a scheduled, procured line
The questions we're actually asked
How much should a Hong Kong business spend on IT?
As a market benchmark, most SMEs land between roughly HK$700 and HK$3,500 per person per month all-in (hardware, software, cloud, connectivity, security and support together), with the position in that range set by industry, regulation and infrastructure. Financial services and legal sit toward the top; retail and manufacturing toward the bottom. These are market ranges from published benchmarks, not PTS prices: the planner's job is to show where a business like yours typically sits and what moves the number.
Is % of revenue or spend per head the better benchmark?
Per head is more actionable for SMEs: headcount is known, revenue bands are wide, and most IT costs scale with people. Revenue percentage (published cross-industry averages sit around 5–6%, with financial services nearer 7–10%) is the board-level cross-check. If the two disagree, per head is usually telling the truth.
Are these PTS's prices?
No, and this matters enough to say plainly: this planner is not PTS calculating what it would cost you to work with PTS. It is general, high-level planning for your whole operational IT budget. Every figure is a market benchmark range from the named public sources, describing what businesses typically budget across all their IT costs, whoever provides them. PTS publishes no pricing. If you want help or advice specific to your business, contact us; the free budget review is that conversation.
What belongs inside an IT budget?
Six lines cover nearly everything: people and external support; software and SaaS; hardware on a refresh cycle; cloud and hosting; connectivity; and security-specific items, plus a 5–10% contingency. The commonest structural mistakes are hiding projects inside run costs and leaving team-bought SaaS off the page entirely.
How do we cut the number without raising the risk?
In order: licence true-downs at renewal (the usual 10–30%), consolidating overlapping apps, stretching refresh on low-risk devices by a year, and renegotiating connectivity, before touching support levels or security items. Cutting the security slice saves the least and costs the most; it's the last resort, not the first.
Why do regulated firms budget more?
Because the regulator and your clients' auditors buy things with your money: evidence, testing, retention, training, faster patching. The benchmark uplift is real (roughly 15–25% in these bands). The good news is most of it doubles as genuine resilience rather than pure compliance theatre.
Ask us the one that isn't here
- A thirty-minute conversation with someone who builds these budgets every quarter, not a sales call
- The answer is usually a short list of what to count first
Sources & method
- Per-industry IT spend as % of revenue: Flexera, State of Tech Spend, the only major analyst per-industry figures published openly (financial services ~10.0%, healthcare ~5.0%, industrial products ~4.1%, software ~24.7%), as summarised alongside cross-industry averages (~5–6%) at ITBudgetCalculator’s benchmark digest. Gartner’s per-industry ratios sit behind its subscription IT Key Metrics Data and are deliberately not quoted here.
- SMB IT spend per employee: published survey roundups placing typical SMB all-in spend at roughly US$1,000–5,000 per employee per year, higher per head at small headcounts, and 4–8% of revenue on average: Medha Cloud, SMB IT Spending Statistics 2026; The Network Installers, IT Budget Statistics.
- Market context: Gartner, Worldwide IT Spending Forecast press release (October 2025). Spending growth near 10% a year is why last year’s budget understates next year’s.
- Method: the HK$ per-head bands and the six-line structure are synthesised by PTS from the sources above, adjusted for Hong Kong cost structures (labour, connectivity, typical SME stacks) observed across the estates PTS has run since 2001. They are planning bands for your whole operational IT budget, not PTS rates, and not a quote.
- The licence slice, priced precisely: Microsoft list prices are verified separately in the Microsoft 365 Plan Picker (as at 26 August 2026).
- PTS guides: How to plan an IT budget · How much does IT support cost in Hong Kong? · IT advisory & vCIO.
The IT Budget Benchmark & Cost Planner is general, high-level planning guidance for a business's whole operational IT budget, built on market benchmark ranges from the published sources cited on the Sources tab and adjusted for Hong Kong by PTS Managed Services Limited. It is not PTS calculating the cost of working with PTS: it shows no PTS pricing and is not a quote or an offer. For advice specific to your business, contact us. References current at 26 August 2026.