Calculating the Costs of IT in Your Business

Your business depends on reliable IT infrastructure to operate and grow. From phone systems to internet connectivity, business applications, file management and more, IT is the underlying foundation of day-to-day business activities. So, it all just needs to work. But what if it doesn’t? Here are five IT risks and what they can really cost your business. Is your IT staff prepared? Are your partners? Make sure you have a plan in place to prevent these unnecessary and costs of IT failures.

Lost Productivity

Almost all IT failures lead to decreased productivity—from not being able to access data and business applications to using resources inefficiently.

Why it’s costly:

When systems are down or staff can’t use a critical business application, there’s a high likelihood your business will lose revenue: for businesses that bill by the hour (lawyers, accountants, etc.) every lost hour is a loss of billable time; for organizations that rely on sales, every lost sales transaction is a loss of revenue.

Prevent it:

• Engage with a Managed Service Provider that gets the value of proactively managing IT to prevent issues from happening in the first place.
• Implement software tools, processes and analytics to gain visibility into your clients and reduce the underlying causes of problems on desktops and laptops.

Microserve Advantage:

Microserve leverages software analytics tools and proactive processes like no other Managed Service Provider; our software analyzes data like the number application crashes, hangs, boot up times, and more to proactively identify issues and remediate them even if users don’t call our helpdesk.

Security Breach

A security breach is any unauthorized access to your data, system, application or network that gives intruders access to sensitive competitive and personal data.

The costs of IT:

In addition to potential damage to your reputation (think Sony email hacks), viruses and malware can infect machines and prevent employees from accessing the data and applications they need to do their jobs. Besides downtime, this can result in duplication of efforts to recreate lost content. In the case of ransomware (a type of malicious software that blocks your data until you pay a sum of money), there may even be a hard cost to get data back.

While you might think a security breach won’t happen to you, 55% of businesses with revenues under $10 million report one or more breaches.¹ And, if a security breach does occur, 33% of businesses need three or more days to recover, if they do at all—60% of SMBs fail within 6 months of being hacked.¹

Prevent it:

• Implement security controls such as: firewalls, encryption, 2-factor authentication, anti- virus/spam/malware.
• Develop a data backup and retention strategy (so you don’t need to pay the ransomware hackers to get your data back).
• Proactively monitor and maintain systems to ensure security breaches are prevented and detected as fast as possible if they do happen.

Microserve Advantage:

IT security applications are not ‘set and forget’ tools–they need to be continuously monitored, tested and updated to remain effective. Many small businesses do not have the processes, resources and discipline to monitor security on their own and a Managed Service Provider like Microserve can provide this service.

Data Loss

Data loss may be tied to a security breach, an IT component failure, user error like accidental deletion or a disaster such as a fire or flood.

The costs of IT:

If you’re lucky enough to have a backup, you still might not be able to restore it quickly. Waiting to order and implement new hardware to restore a backup can result in several extra days of downtime. In addition, backups are not always regularly monitored and tested so when you go to restore, you might find that your data is gone. Without an up-to-date backup, you risk lost days, weeks or months of crucial business data.

Prevent it:

• Reduce the risk of data loss with the 3-2-1 rule: keep three copies of your data stored on two types of media with one copy stored offsite.
• Implement a complete Backup-as-a-Service solution that ensures data protection with fully integrated, fast and secure disaster recovery and offsite backup.
• Enable even faster recovery times with best-of-breed Disaster-Recovery-as-a-Service.

Microserve Advantage:

As with security, backups and disaster recovery planning requires continuous monitoring and testing to make sure everything is working properly. Microserve’s Comprehensive Managed Services provides this ongoing service as part of a complete Backup-as-a-Service solution. We also offer premium services such as Disaster-Recovery-as-a-Service to ensure fast recovery if ever needed.

Poor Support Model

A poor support model can result in employees not knowing how to properly use the tools and software they have or how to fix IT issues that prevent them from doing their jobs.

The costs of IT:

With incorrectly used technology tools and resources, your business will experience a loss of productivity. In addition, your staff may be wasting valuable time trying to fix technology and provide unofficial helpdesk functions—from plugging in a new computer to setting up new email accounts–instead of doing their actual jobs.

Prevent it:

·         Implement a technology strategy to make sure the best tools and technologies are in place to support your business.

·         Ensure you have an official helpdesk your staff can reach out to with any IT questions.

Microserve Advantage:

With years of experience and customers across all industries, Microserve helps you develop strong technology strategies that reduce risk, improve staff productivity and maximize your investment in technology. Our Managed Services also provides 24/7 access in the event of a major issue.

Unexpected Costs of IT Repair

Businesses that don’t proactively manage their IT investment often encounter unexpected failures.  This could be anything from a device like a firewall or network switch dying to your entire server going down.

The costs of IT:

Instead of preventing issues, small issues snowball into huge problems. When a system finally goes down, you’ll need to pay top dollar for an emergency assessment, diagnosis, and repair of the issue. Unexpected IT repair costs can easily exceed any budgets you’ve set.

Prevent it:

·         Put systems in place to monitor IT and keep it updated to prevent issues from happening in the first place.  If something does go wrong, have someone ‘on the hook’ to make sure it gets back up and running as fast as possible.

·         Implement a complete Managed Services solution at an ‘all-you-can-eat’ fixed fee per month so that a major incident doesn’t cause your costs of IT to skyrocket.

Microserve Advantage:

Microserve has a suite of proactive tools that enable us to detect problems before they happen. If something does occur, we have an entire department available on call 24/7 to ensure we can respond quickly and fix the issue as quickly as possible.

How can all these risks add up to costs for your business? Finding a way to calculate the real cost of IT hasn’t been an easy thing to do—until now. Use our calculator to find out how all these costs can add up for your business.

Calculating the true costs of IT can help you:

• Improve IT support
• Justify IT expenditure
• Allocate budget to problem prevention
• Understand the risk of not taking action

Source: 1. Ponemon Institute/Broadcom Inc, 2013 Cost of Data Breach Study: United States, May 2013.