Downtime. It’s the bane of every business and something that could happen to any of us at any time. Whether the cause is seasonal and expected or due to a problem with technology, even one hour of downtime could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
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Most companies couldn’t withstand such a loss. If you don’t want to become a statistic, you need to find a realistic way to deal with downtime.
The True Cost and Causes of Downtime
Downtime has effects that can be measured, such as financial and data losses. There are also intangible effects that can’t be calculated but will be felt regardless. These include things like loss of customers, trust, and reputation.
In some ways, these intangible effects are more dangerous to the life and health of your brand, and they can take longer to turn around. More than half of SMBs will go out of business entirely within six months of a major disruption.
Business disruptions can come out of nowhere. The most common reasons for downtime are:
- Hardware failures
- Software malfunctions
- Security breaches
- Human error
- System overloads
- Power loss
Every minute that your systems are offline and you can’t serve your customers, you risk sending business to the competition. You may not get it back. Such losses can even happen to large, international corporations like Amazon.
Just last year, Amazon experienced a system crash during one of their peak business days. The problem wasn’t extensive; the disruption only lasted about 15 minutes. Their estimated financial loss during that short amount of time? Two and a half million dollars.
Large enterprises have the resources to bounce back and a large customer base to take the sting out of a loss. They also plan for such situations in advance.
Rather than learning the hard way and paying the ultimate price, you can learn from the experiences of others by implementing strategies to reduce the cost of downtime.
Five Strategies for Mitigating the Effects of Downtime
The best way to deal with downtime is to avoid it altogether. Unfortunately, some downtime is unavoidable. For example, no one can predict when a natural disaster or an IT glitch will hit.
The strongest companies are those that can withstand adversity and reduce its effects.
Perform a Risk-Assessment
No matter how big or small your business, one of the most critical steps you can take is to know your strengths and weaknesses, both internal and external. This risk assessment can be conducted in-house or outsourced to a professional with a bit of objectivity and experience analyzing business vulnerabilities.
Outsourcing has the added benefit of reducing stress on your staff and containing costs.
Comprehensive risk assessments allow you to detect weaknesses in security, problems with efficiency, and identify issues you didn’t even know you had, such as staff dissatisfaction.
Improve Your IT Oversight
Whether you’re a sole practitioner or you run a large enterprise with multiple locations, technology is a critical component of your business. Tech issues are also one of the leading causes of downtime.
You can reduce the risk of problems by:
- Using secure services and networks
- Keeping all of your tech up-to-date
- Using managed IT services, which often come with expertise and resources that are beyond the reach of a smaller company
Many companies do take measures to protect tech they deal with every day. But, what is the state of your shadow IT?
Shadow IT are those systems that run quietly in the background. They hum along unnoticed until something goes wrong. They also include outsourced systems and apps, including:
- Cloud-based apps and SaaS
- OAuth-enabled, cloud-based connections
- Hardware or devices brought in by staff
Even a medium-sized business can have hundreds of apps and connections that aren’t directly under their control. These pose a high risk to data integrity.
You can avoid such issues by limiting BYOD (bring your own device), using only secure, known networks, and setting policies that curtail the use of external or unauthorized applications.
Use Planned Periods of Downtime to Your Advantage
You can reduce the chances of a tech-related disruption and keep your customers happy by planning for short periods of downtime and announcing them in advance. This will give you ample time to upgrade or replace redundant systems and avoid the problem of customers visiting an inaccessible website.
Try to shoot for planned downtime during times when you would typically have less traffic, and put a notice on your website with the exact date, time, duration, and reason for the shutdown.
Have a Backup Plan for Everything
If you’re in an area that experiences weather-related power outages on a regular basis, make sure that you have a backup power system.
You can better protect your databases by using a combination of off-site, cloud-based storage, and physical storage in another location for more sensitive data.
When you don’t have to replace lost data, you can get back up and running faster. You’ll also eliminate the embarrassment of public disclosure and the resulting loss of business.
Have a Mitigation/Restoration Plan in Place
When the unexpected happens, agility and fast recovery are essential. This requires planning based upon your risk assessment and a periodic reevaluation to address changes in circumstances and goals. You should also incorporate the cost of disaster recovery into your budget.
What does an effective mitigation and recovery plan look like?
It involves having a detailed overview of your liabilities by the level of risk and cost of recovery. For example, if you lost a critical file, how long would it take you to recover from that loss? How can that cost be reduced?
Once you’ve determined your risk tolerance for various types of disasters, draw up a detailed plan that describes how recovery should proceed. This might include:
- The stages of your recovery plan
- The person or department responsible for each phase or component
- In what ways your business will be affected, such as which departments can be back online fastest or which will cost them most
- Who will need to be notified in the event of a disruption, when, and by what means
Once you’ve formulated a plan, you need to test its efficiency.
Are all components working as expected? Is your backup tech functioning as it should? Have you overlooked anything that could pose a problem in a real-world situation?
It’s also critical that you reevaluate and re-test your plan periodically and that all stakeholders are involved in the planning, reevaluation, and testing.
Final Thoughts
Managing downtime is just as important as managing business growth. You can reduce the amount of unplanned downtime by scheduling set times for maintenance and other business disruptions.
No one can predict the future. But, we can put safeguards in place to minimize that damage and turn the situation around faster. When you demonstrate that you’re in control and ready for anything, it instills confidence in your team and supports brand loyalty.
Has downtime been an issue for your company? Tell us about your challenges and success stories.
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Ashley Wilson is a content creator, writing about business and tech. She has been known to reference movies in casual conversation and enjoys baking homemade treats for her husband and their two felines, Lady and Gaga. You can get in touch with Ashley via Twitter.
