We're under pressure to reduce costs. How are other people doing/thinking through this?

There’s always pressure to – 1) reduce operational expenses; 2) do more with less. Both are typically through optimization and automation. However, higher efficiency doesn’t happen on its own, it requires an effort, which means funding. So, to save money you often need to spend money. ROI, TCO and other measures can be used to justify investments. In terms of strategies – reducing legacy debt is often key to being able to free some funds; switching from CapEx to OpEx focused model can help with justifying budgets.

Here are my thoughts:
Boards tend to forget what you are spending in IT and what you get for the money. They do not understand maintenance vs new investments. It is up to you to educate them and help them understand the “buckets”. It’s an ongoing discussion/ reporting effort not just at budget review time.
I like to do “ state of the union” presentations with my Board and give them the good, the bad & the ugly truths about my IT organization which includes how I am fixing the bad things and making the ugly stuff better. One of the most compelling parts of the presentation is what I call Value Management which is how we are working to continually cut costs : renegotiating vendor contracts, re evaluating the existing infrastructure, staffing (both in house and contractors) , re- setting priorities and only working on shorter term priorities with meaningful business deliveries, etc to see where we can adjust the numbers. Then I use those dollars to fund “start up “innovation ideas. It usually can move a project far enough along to get special support and funding outside the budget if there is enough enthusiasm in its value and a business partner is driving it with you.
There are so many creative ways to deal with your challenge. I would be happy to have a conference call to discuss more if you are interested .

Analyze your expense and cut them where you dont get any advantage (printing, cell phones, etc) those can be replaced easily with other strategies like paperless BYOD. CUT STUPID OLD FASHIONED IT PROJECTS NOW!!! those than take more than a year (and that is altready too much) are dead by the time they see the light. Invest in projects that make difference for the core of the business you are in.

There are always areas where optimizations can occur and not just within IT. I think a good way to look at it is where can you help cut costs across the organization and that will also always result in an automation/innovation roadmap which excites everyone (stakeholders and IT teams alike).

That is a tough one, but we all face it. I don't know if your organization is a non-profit. If it is, there are many opportunities to reduce cost with vendors, especially software vendors. For instance, the Google suite is free to many qualifying non-profits. That includes email, which is a massive savings. Also, depending on the size of the organization, NOT going to cloud can save significant money once you are past the initial phase. I know that is a heretical view, but I have seen it many times. Some things are necessary, some things are nice to have. For the nice to have stuff, consider someone other than IT paying the bill.