How Downtime Can Sink Your Business (And What to Do About It)

Nothing is more frustrating than when technology should work, but doesn’t for any number of reasons. Of course, it’s also expensive when your technology doesn’t work, which means you’re incurring costs during this downtime period. Today, we want to address the consequences of downtime and what you can do about it to minimize its impact on your business.

The Financial Implications of Downtime

Think downtime isn’t hurting your organization? Here’s just a sample of what it’s doing to your business:

• Less productivity: The most direct cost of downtime. Every minute of every employee impacted by downtime contributes to your losses.
• Recovery costs: It takes time and money to address the root cause of downtime. This can involve IT support fees, hardware repair and replacement, or even complex troubleshooting.
• Loss of reputation and consumer trust: People want to rely on your business, and they can’t do that when your systems are down or unavailable during a downtime incident.
• Missed opportunities: During a downtime incident, you might deal with unanswered sales calls, delayed project milestones, failed orders, stalled collaborations, and more, all costing your business opportunities.
• Compliance and regulatory issues: Businesses in regulated industries like finance, healthcare, or law can suffer non-compliance fines and penalties.

While the cost of downtime varies, it’s safe to say that the majority of these hundreds or even thousands of wasted dollars can be eliminated through the smart use of technology.

Strategies to Minimize Downtime

If you use the appropriate proactive strategies, you can effectively mitigate downtime to the point where it’s non-existent. Here are three actions you can take today to avoid sustaining downtime:

• Use a proactive maintenance and monitoring strategy: Don’t just wait for your technology to break down; have a plan ready to execute for when it does. Implement system checks, software updates, patching, and monitoring so you can react to warning signs and take action well in advance.
• Implement a powerful backup and disaster recovery plan: You need a data backup and disaster recovery solution to act as a safety net in the off-chance you experience a downtime-causing catastrophe. Be sure to have a secure, tested, and actionable plan so you can carry out your recovery processes quickly.
• Bolster your cybersecurity defenses: Cyberattacks, including ransomware, can lead to considerable downtime, as they can lock down your systems even during the recovery period. We recommend you build multilayered defenses for your systems, including firewalls, endpoint protection, email filtering, cybersecurity awareness training, and monitoring.

Make Your Business’ IT More Reliable

Don’t let downtime hold your business back from the success it should see. Learn more about how to prevent downtime with proactive IT solutions today by calling us at (804) 264-9339.