Grid4 Managed IT - Real Cost of IT Downtime

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The Real Cost of IT Downtime for Businesses

Just one minute of downtime can cost a small business between $137 and $427.*

Almost every modern business relies on IT. Beyond desktops and workstations, you probably need mobile devices, servers, cloud-based apps and internet-based phones to get work done. If any one of these resources goes down, customers may leave and never return. Think about it, would you do business with a company that was unreliable or inaccessible?

In an age of online reviews and social media, you can’t afford to let this happen.

^*CIO.COM

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Solutions for Business Continuity

As today’s technology landscape grows increasingly complex, businesses are turning to Managed IT service providers to help complement their team or to help fully manage IT services.

Download our PDFs on solutions that help mitigate downtime while improving operations for your business.

What's at stake?

Downtime scenarios vary widely. Many companies expect and plan for a degree of downtime, particularly during routine maintenance or hardware and software upgrades. Of course, these scheduled downtimes need to be kept to a minimum; but with proper planning, you have the chance to warn your customers in advance.

What’s worse is unexpected downtime, which will quickly eat away at your reputation and encourage even loyal customers to start looking elsewhere. It’s not just customer dissatisfaction you have to worry about, however.

Here are some of the other factors that can end up affecting your bottom line:

Reduced employee productivity and motivation
Lost sales revenue
Supply chain disruption
Employee overtime costs
Systems and data recovery costs

Worse still is the fact that the cost of downtime is increasing every year as businesses become more reliant on an ever-growing set of modern technologies. Most of the time, human error is the weakest link, particularly in the case of on-premises IT systems that tend to be costly to maintain.

Identifying the cause of downtime costs

New technology has shifted expectations. Customers demand that businesses stay open later and close for holidays less often.

Even a traditional high-street business is expected to have a consistent online presence with a fast and reliable internet presence at its core. As such, regardless of the nature of your business, every minute of unscheduled downtime can increase overhead costs and ultimately lead to the issues listed.

The problem with unscheduled downtime is that it’s often difficult to resolve.

From pinpointing the cause to taking steps to mitigate the damage, there are many things you need to do to curb costs. Other factors include the cost of lost employee productivity, the procurement and implementation of new equipment and the cost of any third-party contractors you may need.

Calculating the costs of downtime

Lost sales revenue is perhaps the biggest expense, especially in the case of businesses that operate primarily or entirely online. After all, if your systems are down, there’s a good chance that you won’t be able to generate any revenue at all.

To calculate the cost of lost revenue, you’ll first need to identify which systems are responsible for generating revenue, such as your website, internet-based phones and customer relationship management software. You’ll then need to calculate the average amount of revenue you receive per hour to determine how much any lost sales are costing you.

Reduced employee productivity

If you’re paying your employees to come to work and there’s nothing they can do, they’ll quickly lose their motivation as well. You can calculate the cost of lost productivity by the amount each employee earns against the percentage of their work that is reliant on the afflicted systems.

Finally, there’s the cost of recovery to think about, such as the services you need to recover any lost data or any devices that need hasty replacement.

Downtime can also lead to ongoing costs while new systems are in the process of being deployed, particularly if any staff retraining is needed. The final cost per hour of downtime will, of course, vary enormously from one business to the next, but you need to define an acceptable maximum and prepare for it as exhaustively as possible.

Business Continuity

Grid4 provides a range of managed services, from augmenting your existing team to full management of your IT environment, to alleviate many of the concerns that small to mid-sized businesses have regarding downtime.

Find out how our dependable services can give you peace of mind, contact us today.

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Why Grid4 Managed IT?

When it comes to finding a managed IT service provider to oversee your network, it pays to find a good fit. While each company needs different things, Grid4 prides itself as technical advocates for customers, providing personalized service that help’s your business grow.

Grid4 has provided telecommunications and managed IT services to Michigan customers for over 20 years. Grid4 is the only local managed IT services provider that offers the depth and reach of carrier services that gives you significant network access options all under a single company. Your network is assured to be smarter, more reliable without having multiple vendors to manage. Having one provider saves you money.

Optimize the efficiency, productivity, and agility of your IT environment, so you can focus on growing your organization.

Grid4 IT SolutionsBuilt For Success