Downtime is something no business ever wants to experience. With downtime, operations get halted, and that only means one thing: loss of money. Downtime can cost anywhere from a few thousand pounds to hundreds of thousands of pounds depending on the company affected. For large enterprises, a single hour can lead to millions lost. These numbers alone should help you realise just how important it is to implement actionable solutions to combat downtime, and if these reasons are not enough for you to do so, consider the following:
1. Risk of Lost Data
The most severe downtimes can put your company at risk of data loss. Files can become corrupted, network security can end up exposed, and many other problems can lead to severe and unpredictable consequences. With exposed security, cyberattacks can occur that can lead to even further damage. Your sensitive data (and that of your clients or customers) might end up destroyed, or worse, leaked.
For issues such as server outages, even data that is backed up may not be accessible, rendering you unable to carry out services. All these and more can lead to unhappy and angry customers.
2. Productivity drops
Many companies today rely on online communications and services to operate, and you might be in the same shoes. Everything from communicating with clients down to emailing your staff is done through digital means. If you face downtime, these activities might end up halted. Productivity levels can drop—even down to zero if your business fully relies on cloud or online services. Costs such as salaries and rent will remain, even if your ability to work does not. All these expenses will mount higher and higher until the problem is solved.
3. The brand takes damage
With unhappy customers, your brand will take a hit. Customers having to deal with frequent server outages can slowly start to see your brand as unreliable and unprofessional. This type of damage is not easy to recover from, and in some cases, you might recover ever.
Things can worsen when customers share negative reviews about your business and warn other people about their experience with you. In other words, bad word of mouth is your enemy here, and downtimes are a one-way ticket towards destroying your reputation.
4. Opportunities disappear
Without servers, opportunities to drive sales up are lost. This is especially true if you rely heavily on your website to make those sales. Having an unresponsive website is the same as leaving the sign as “closed” on your brick-and-mortar stores. People are going to show up, get disappointed, leave, and perhaps never come back.
Even if your website still loads, having it load slowly is just as destructive. Each passing second will lose customers.
Conclusion
If you do not want any of the above problems to affect your business, work with professionals to find the right solution. Anything from working with a reputable web host to working with the right IT support can lower the chances of downtimes. While it will take some investment to get started, it will pay off quickly with the business, thanks to a reliable server that runs as expected.
Are you looking to protect your servers from downtime? Stephensons IT Support Solutions Ltd are cloud backup specialists that offer assistance to their clients to prevent system downtime and more. Work with us today to keep your server running 24/7!