Turning year‑end budget pressure into long‑term resilience
As the public sector financial year draws to a close, CTOs, IT leaders, cyber security managers and finance directors face a familiar challenge: how to use remaining budget responsibly while ensuring investments deliver lasting value. As cyber risk and compliance requirements increase, organisations are finding that isolated, short-term purchases struggle to keep pace. A more strategic, service-led approach is emerging as a way to sustain assurance, resilience and control over time.
At MTI, we work with public sector organisations to help transform end‑of‑year spend into future‑proofed cyber security and data centre capability – reducing risk, improving compliance and creating predictable costs over multiple years.
The end of year challenge facing public sector IT
As we approach the end of the 2025–26 financial year, many public sector organisations are experiencing heightened pressure on budgets and procurement timelines. Common challenges include:
- Rising server and laptop costs, placing unexpected strain on capital budgets
- Duplication of functionality across multiple software platforms
- Licensing increases, particularly following changes from major vendors
- Extended hardware lead times, making delivery and receipting before the end of March increasingly difficult
These factors make traditional, asset‑heavy end‑of‑year purchasing riskier than ever – both financially and operationally.
1. A smarter approach: strategic services call off agreements
Rather than rushing procurement decisions, forward‑thinking public sector organisations are using year‑end budget to establish strategic services call‑off contracts. These multi‑year agreements allow organisations to secure value today while retaining flexibility tomorrow.
MTI helps customers design services agreements that:
- Future‑proof consultancy pricing against inflation and market volatility
- Prioritise optimisation of existing technology before investing in new platforms
- Enable multiple solution areas, cyber, infrastructure, compliance and operations, to be called off under a single agreement
- Lock in reduced day rates for predictable, recurring needs such as penetration testing, audits and health checks
- Provide flexible invoicing and bespoke commercial models aligned to public sector financial constraints
The result is a supplier relationship that supports long‑term strategy, not just short‑term spend.
2. Linking spend to strategy, compliance and outcomes
Using end-of-year budget for strategic services enables public sector organisations to invest with confidence, ensuring every pound supports broader digital and cyber security objectives. MTI works with customers to align services with organisational strategy, cyber security best practice, and key compliance frameworks, delivering tangible, measurable outcomes.
Our experience shows that organisations with a defined cyber security strategy and compliance roadmap:
- Save an average of 25% on major cyber security projects over £100,000 per annum
- Are 60% more likely to achieve compliance on the first submission
This mirrors the experience of East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust, which engaged MTI to move from reactive cyber activity to a structured cyber resilience strategy and security target operating model – aligning investment with NHS regulatory requirements and long-term operational resilience.
End-of-year investment in strategic services allows organisations to build a clear, defensible roadmap for the years ahead. These services include:
- Compliance gap analysis, mapping existing controls to required standards
- Cyber security strategy and target operating model (TOM) development
- Future planning assessments, including:
- SIEM readiness
- XDR readiness
- Secure backup and disaster recovery
- Network segmentation
- Third-party and supply chain risk assessments
By investing early, organisations can plan future technology and service adoption with clarity and confidence, ensuring their spend drives long-term resilience, compliance, and cost efficiency.
3. Reducing operational cost through multi year services
End‑of‑year spend can also be used to reduce long‑term operational costs for services that organisations know they will need year after year.
Through multi‑year call‑off agreements, MTI enables public sector customers to:
- Secure predictable, competitive day rates over a defined term
- Reduce procurement overhead for repeat services
- Flexibly reallocate services to different projects as priorities change
Common operational services delivered under these agreements include:
- Penetration testing, configuration reviews and technical assurance
- People, process and policy assessments
- Vulnerability management services
- Technology management, including SIEM, SOC and XDR
- Supply‑chain security and risk‑managed services
The end of year challenge facing public sector IT
With over 35 years’ experience delivering cyber security and data centre services, MTI is a trusted partner for public sector organisations that demand assurance, scale, and sector-specific expertise. We have helped secure 99% of NHS Trusts across the UK, providing strategic cyber resilience and compliance services that protect critical infrastructure and sensitive data.
Our credentials include:
- Extensive sector coverage – supporting central and local government, healthcare, and education
- Industry leadership – founding member of CREST, helping shape UK-wide cyber security standards
- Trusted NHS partner – delivering strategic remediation programmes and retained services to NHS England for over seven years
- Comprehensive service capability – backed by Ricoh and PFH, enabling a holistic approach to data centre and cyber security operations
These capabilities translate into real-world outcomes:
- Strengthening cyber resilience for complex, large-scale healthcare environments such as East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust
- Securing globally distributed digital platforms for organisations such as the British Council
Making year end spend work harder
End‑of‑year budget does not need to be a race against the clock. With the right strategic partner, it can become a catalyst for long‑term resilience, compliance and cost control.
Strategic services agreements allow public sector organisations to move away from reactive purchasing and towards planned, outcome‑driven investment – ensuring today’s spend delivers value well beyond the financial year.
Get in touch today
To support organisations during this critical period, MTI is offering a complimentary End-of-Year Cyber Security or Data Centre Strategy Workshop, where our experts will:
Review your current cyber security and data landscape
Identify opportunities to optimise existing investments
Map year-end spend to long-term strategy, compliance and operational outcomes
Contact us today to discuss your end-of-year priorities and secure your place before financial year end.