Ever have the problem where you just can’t seem to pinpoint your information technology issues?
It could be your internet keeps going down, laptops keep dying and your employees are getting restless from waiting on support and using ancient hardware with outdated software. But why?
If your IT managed service provider can’t tell you (and fix) the underlying problem, they may be your problem. In fact, they may be putting your organization at greater risk than if you didn’t have them at all.
How IT Providers Can Endanger Your Business
You trust that your IT managed service provider is a protector of your business. But if your IT provider is more concerned with solving individual support tickets than partnering with you for your business’ long-term success, you’re likely in more danger than you think – and they aren’t proactively protecting you.
Three ways a poorly performing IT provider can harm your business include:
1. Decreased productivity. If your employees can’t work because their computers or the network is down, you can’t take advantage of their peak performance. Technology should help improve your productivity, not hinder it.
2. Lack of adequate data protection. Every provider will tell you they perform backups, but how do you know they are doing it and doing it right? If your provider is not performing adequate backups and then testing the backups on a frequent schedule you risk losing your data forever.
3. Slow response time. Are your employees getting too skilled at playing games on their smartphones while waiting endlessly to get help with computer problems? How long can your business afford to wait? Your team will have to work twice as hard to make up the loss of production hours. However, the real harm comes from the lost opportunities of new business.
These are only three things to watch out for if you think your IT managed service provider is holding your business back from meeting its goals.
Measuring IT Downtime for Professional Services
There are several impressive studies that cite the cost of downtime. If you are a numbers person, below is an equation that let’s you calculate the productivity cost of downtime.
Productivity cost = E x A x C x H
E = number of employees affected
% = percentage of employees affected
C = average cost of employees per hour
H = number of downtime hours
This might only be the surface of the calculation. What about lost revenue? Will you lose revenue or just work harder to get it later? Those are the only two options with down time. Every business is different, and you’ll have to consider your situation. Accountants, attorneys, engineers and anyone that bills services by the hour may not lose revenue because you’ll just get it later (by working harder). Revenue might be “time shifted” to a later time. However, if you are a transaction-oriented business, an hour of downtime might just be revenue lost forever.
However, in any business, if you have 47 employees sitting around not working for 5 hours the costs just add up. They might be:
- Direct costs of staff not working
- Recovery costs of staff making up the work
- Decreased client satisfaction
- Increased employee stress and morale issues
- Possible loss of clients
- Reputation damage
The truth is, there is not magic number of the cost of downtime to your business. The outcome of downtime is immeasurable because many of the costs are unknown to you – like the loss of a new business opportunity.
IT Management Should Help You Grow Your Business
Technology should help your business grow, not hinder it. Your IT should make it easier for you to reach your business goals. By improving productivity, decreasing costs and eliminating headaches, you can take advantage of other efficiencies offered by new technologies that are often overlooked. If you think your IT department or IT provider is slowing your business down, contact us for help. Not only can we assess your current IT infrastructure for issues, we can evaluate your IT provider’s performance to give you an expert third-party evaluation.
If you’d like to experience the expert IT strategy, service and support other Indianapolis-area businesses receive from Accelerate, get in touch with us at 317.596.3650 or online. Let us show you the pros of managed IT services with none of the cons.