When the Wi-Fi Dies

We’ve all felt that mini-panic that happens when our personal technology glitches. Not a great feeling. That’s just if your microwave is on the fritz, or your smartphone fell in the toilet. We all depend on multiple devices each day, but for a business owner who is responsible for so much, technology failure really isn’t an option. This month, we thought we’d go into how technology outages can impact a business to give you a better perspective of just how much is at stake.

Immediate Results of Downtime

Let’s jump right into the meat and potatoes of this thing: the moment technology fails, the clock starts ticking on tangible losses. 

Here are the impacts of a major downtime event:

• Financial drain - This is often the most immediate and painful. Recent data suggests that for many, this cost averages around $5,600 to $9,000 per minute.
• Productivity paralysis - Your team is ready to work, but their essential tools are offline. This means stalled projects, missed deadlines, and an inability to serve customers effectively. 
• Emergency repair costs - Scrambling to fix a major outage can be expensive, often involving premium rates for emergency IT support and potential hardware replacement.

The Lingering Damage

Unfortunately, the repercussions of a significant outage often extend well beyond the period of downtime itself. They include:

• Erosion of trust and reputation - Customers expect reliability. An outage can make your business appear unprofessional or unstable. Negative experiences can quickly spread through word-of-mouth and online reviews, damaging your hard-earned reputation and making it difficult to retain and attract customers. Rebuilding that trust takes time and consistent effort.
• Customer churn - For many customers, a disruptive outage is a strong motivator to explore your competitors. If they can’t access your services or get the support they need, they may not wait around.
• Strained employee morale - Persistent IT issues and the stress of dealing with outages can significantly impact your team. Frustration mounts when they can't perform their jobs efficiently, potentially leading to decreased job satisfaction and higher turnover.
• Data integrity risks - Depending on the cause and nature of the outage, there's a potential for data loss or corruption. This can have severe consequences, from losing critical business intelligence to regulatory compliance failures if sensitive information is compromised.
• Missed opportunities - While you're focused on recovery, new business opportunities might pass you by. Delays in product launches, service delivery, or responding to sales inquiries can give competitors an edge.

Building Resilience Against Tech Failures

Waiting for an outage to occur before taking action is a high-stakes gamble. The far more strategic approach is to cover your bases with some type of proactive technology support. Instead of simply reacting to problems as they arise, which is sure to have large swaths of downtime, a proactive strategy focused on continuous monitoring, creating strong cybersecurity defenses, and constant maintenance will work to help you avoid more downtime.

By anticipating challenges and building resilient IT systems, you transform your technology from a potential liability into a powerful asset that supports anything you need your business to do.

To learn more about how Preferred can fortify your business against the damaging effects of technology outages, please give us a call today at 708-781-7110.