Downtime is a dreaded word – because, for every minute of downtime your business has, you can never be too sure how much business you are losing. Often an issue with the internet, or in some cases a cybercrime (or another tech glitch).
You as a business owner might be frustrated, but the people who are trying to use your services or buy products will go and spend the money elsewhere.
It is a lose-lose situation and can often be avoided when a qualified professional company handles your IT needs like an NBN Technician.
What is downtime?
Downtime is the umbrella term used to cover a whole range of issues. At its base, you are unable to access networks, machines, systems, and anything integral to running the business that keeps you connected.
Usually, downtime arises from network problems, hardware or software problems – or failing to update software.
Downtime will usually have the following impact:
- Backup and recovery costs
- Productivity loss
- Loss of sales
- Loss of reputation
- Lost data
- Hardware repair
The critical loss is revenue, and it is estimated that since 2020 the monetary cost associated with downtime has risen by 30%.
We saw this in real-time when Facebook had a 14-hour outage, costing a reported 90 million dollars.
You can calculate your downtime using this:
Cost of Downtime (per hour) = Lost Revenue + Lost Productivity + Cost to Recover
Productivity can be the hours your employees or you lost and an hourly rate, and the revenue is your revenue for the year.
The bigger your company, the bigger the cost. But, if you consider that many SaaS companies have clients who also rely on their technology, the impact can be far-reaching.
Can you minimize downtime costs?
One of the ways that you can minimize your downtime costs is to have a managed IT company handling your systems. A trusted one will take everything from putting software on new devices to running maintenance at the right time – without a glitch.
A disaster recovery plan is also something you will have when an IT company handles your network and systems.
You can also think about these things:
What will you do if you have downtime? How would you take action? Keeping in mind spending time deciding is doing nothing – and costing money.
How will you communicate your downtime with your clients and employees? The communication you send out can make or break your work relationships.
Where are your points of failure? Do your staff run regular backups? Do they have training? What technical fail-safes do you have in place?
When downtime does happen, do you look at the process and the actions are taken, or do you hope it doesn’t happen again? Examining what happened and why it happened can save you plenty of money in the long run.
The actual cost of downtime is loss of reputation, data, loss of revenue, and loss of trust from your clients. If that sounds like things you want to avoid, it is time to look at who and how your networks and systems are handled.
Your IT is just one area that you can protect your business; here are some others to consider: Smart Strategies To Protect Your Small Business » The Culture Supplier.
