You’re working on a time-sensitive project, and you’re unable to access important files on the company server. Or, you’re in the middle of an important Skype meeting, and your Internet connection severs. Sometimes downtime is unpredictable – like in the case of natural disasters and weather emergencies – but the result is always the same: decreased productivity and profits.
Downtime is costly. Many businesses are faced with the decision of spending now on proactive IT services or later on reactive support and a loss of data and credibility. In the long run, spending now to develop a digital downtime prevention strategy helps you save on costlier issues.
If you only contact your IT support team when there’s a problem, then there’s a problem.
Reactive IT services do not cater to a long-term solution for maximized technology uptime and minimized downtime. A proactive approach to increasing operational effectiveness and business security through managed IT services is exactly what you need if you want your business to succeed.
The right IT monitoring tools help your support team monitor your network and IT infrastructure, identify threats before they become real-life problems, provide shareholders with business intelligence to make technology decisions, plan for technology upgrades and, ultimately, reduce digital downtime and losses in productivity.
Users within a professional services firm with about 60 employees started reporting server errors to IT. The controller, who also served as internal IT support, realized that the company had run out of disk space on its server. The controller noticed a large file that did not appear to be critical, so he deleted it to free up space, get the server back online and enable users to work.
After fixing the problem, the controller called an IT support services firm to see if there was anything else that could be done. They found not only that the controller deleted an important file, but also that backups had not been successful for several weeks. As a result of user error and a lack of monitoring tools, the client lost valuable data, including customer emails containing sales orders.
The client experienced a full system outage for about one business day as the outsourced IT support team attempted to retrieve and restore data. If the IT services firm had been called within the first few hours, the loss in data, productivity, profits and reputation could have been avoided.
IT monitoring tools that track server performance and disk space could have alerted an onsite IT team member or offsite support services to these problems so that an outage or downtime was prevented.
This is a real-life example of why companies need monitoring tools to track IT infrastructure performance and keep their employees and businesses profitable. This incident of digital downtime cost the company $30,000 in gross profit.
After the downtime, the company adopted a proactive approach to IT support, which included monitoring tools to prevent outages in the future. Since partnering with an outsourced IT firm, the company has not experienced any major technology downtime.
Companies need tools to monitor their technology. But the implementation of IT monitoring tools requires careful thought. Are you monitoring the right things? Are your thresholds for action too high or too low, creating unnecessary noise for your IT support team? If your business is on the fast track for growth, these thresholds may change fairly quickly. So, it’s important to constantly review what you’re monitoring to see if you’re still tracking the right things and if the thresholds are set at a level that best meets your current business needs.
Learn from the companies before you that have experienced system outages and chosen a reactive approach to their technology needs. Develop a proactive downtime prevention plan on your own or with the help of a potential provider. It’s time to take your technology needs seriously and plan for the future of your company.