We’ve all heard it said time and again that downtime can drastically impact business visibility, income, and reputation. But, when we consider where the real downtime damage lies, most of us assume that long periods out-of-action are the most detrimental. But, ten minutes here or there? Surely that’s not such a problem?
Until you look at the facts, that is, and realize that even minor downtime disruptions can rack up some worrying costs. Consider, for instance, that the average amount of annual downtime (14 hours) can cost –
$55,000/year for small businesses
$91,000/year for medium enterprises
$1,000,000/year for large companies
This downtime doesn’t span for days or even hours in most cases, but the impact is still devastating, not even just because of lost custom. This is a significant factor, of course, but the real expenses from these short downtime bursts tend to come from sources such as –
Employee wages during idle periods
Overtime when making up for lost work
General workplace disruptions
Etc.
In other words, far from simply losing you sales (which it will do,) ten minutes of downtime could cost you a great deal from an employment perspective. With that in mind, taking action against even brief time spent offline is essential and is something you can achieve by –
# 1 - Prioritizing prevention
Given that even ten minutes is too much downtime, prevention is always better than cure, ensuring that you don’t even go offline for a second. Managed IT services are your best chance to achieve this through 24/7 monitoring that can pick up potential disruptions before they happen and bridge gaps so that you don’t have to worry, even for ten minutes. What’s more, managed expertise ensures that, even if downtime does sneak through, you’re up and running before your team even notice the problem and start costing you in the process.
# 2 - Plan for the worst
Prevention might be key, but you’re also going to want a disaster recovery plan that gets you back up and running fast if the worst does happen. As mentioned, monitoring can do this to some extent but, the more prepared you are, the better position you put yourself in. So, make sure that you put data backups and reconfiguration at the forefront now to save yourself a whole lot of money later.
# 3 - Get your entire team onboard
Too often, we treat downtime and its risks as a management-only issue, but remember, idle staff are one of the worst expenses of short periods of downtime. As such, a focus on training your team with your backup plans in mind means that, even if you go offline, every member of your enterprise springs into action to get you back up and running, and reduce those downtime costs at the same time.
If you thought ten minutes of downtime was nothing to worry about, then think again. Costs start building from the second the clock stops. Ensure they start a much lower level by putting these plans in place at long last.