We have all experienced an instance where our internet goes down and it is definitely frustrating. However, when it comes to experiencing downtime inside the workplace it is far more inconvenient and disruptive. It causes the business to halt and unable to continue operating. For many small businesses this is a severe problem that can even lead to bankruptcy.
Severity
Downtime is an extremely serious problem that can occur in a workplace. Statistics show that most smaller sized businesses that are not on any sort of IT management plan experience around 96%–98% uptime. Sounds like the downtime is pretty minimal right? When we actually look into this figure it actually equates to approximately 83.2 hours of downtime! That is nearly £38,801 ($55,000) lost in revenue in just one year (1).
Prevention
There isn’t a single method that will protect your business from downtime because outages can be a cause of many different factors. Some of the most type of common causes of downtime are:
- Human error
- Cyber attack
- Technology failure
- Natural disaster
Although there isn’t a single method of eliminating downtime, there are ways to prevent them:
Business Continuity Plan
This procedure will outline all of the different fail-safe processes, contingencies and resources to enable your business to continue operating during an outage.
Disaster Recovery Plan
When the business becomes completely unresponsive due to elements that are completely out of your control such as a natural disaster or technology failure, a disaster recovery plan will outline what procedures you need to follow when this type of outage occurs. This could be through backing up data from your hosting/off-site area and allow for you to safely retrieve all of your data.
Testing
A plan is great for when a disaster occurs but the best way to prevent the downtime spiral is through regular testing. Troubleshooting and checking for any vulnerabilities will allow for you to make any fixes or necessary patches in order to ensure the complete safety of your IT infrastructure. You can use outsourced IT companies that will do this for you and ensure that your data is stored safely in case of a disaster. These IT experts will also manage and minimise any downtime to help your business get back and running.
Due to how much downtime could cost your business, you need to be aware of where the problems could potentially come from before they impact you, your business and your clients. Therefore you need to have efficient structures and plans in place to prevent and manage downtime as we have outlined in this blog post.
If you need more information about down time and the best practises of managing them, speak to our IT specialists today! We can help you minimise downtime and manage the security of your data in case of an unexpected circumstance. Call us on 0121 289 4477 or email us at info@solutions4it.co.uk
