Organizations rely on computers and other technology in order to maintain effective day-to-day business. Unfortunately, most small businesses cannot afford to have an on-site technician to take care of immediate issues that arise, answer support questions for employees, and perform general maintenance on the hardware and software that keeps operations running smoothly. When a problem arises, businesses typically reach out to a technical support company, local guru, or IT firm.
The Problem with Traditional IT Methods
The traditional IT practice is often coined the “break-fix” method. When something, such as a computer, network, or server, is broken, tech support arrives on-site to fix it. They track their time and materials during the repair process.
Often, a close business relationship between the two parties is never established – the technician may not be familiar with all of the intricacies and scope of the business’s IT needs, resulting in misguided support and even more billable time to resolve it. All the while the business is suffering a loss in productivity as the staff members affected by the outage experience downtime, and cannot perform their jobs as effectively without their working equipment.
Traditional IT technical support methods are mocked and scrutinized constantly, yet some businesses continue to invest in their IT only when it breaks.
This last issue is even a side-effect of the most proficient technician under the traditional IT model – the business pays the technician for fixing the issue while experiencing costly downtime. Depending on the employee’s role in the company, this could lead to missed opportunities, lower productivity, and necessary overtime in order to meet deadlines – all of which cost the business money.
A seemingly simple IT outage can add up to be a large, unexpected expense very quickly. Let’s look at two formulas for estimating the cost of downtime.
Productivity Loss Formula:
P = (Number of users affected) x (% of Productivity Loss) x (Average salary per hour) x (Duration of downtime)
Revenue Loss Formula:
R = (Number of users affected) x (% of Revenue Loss) x (Average profit per employee per hour) x (Duration)
