I see on a daily basis the benefits of preventative maintenance and what happens to those who make the costly mistake of thinking they are saving money by choosing not to purchase a maintenance agreement on their technology investment.
Although it may seem less expensive each month to only call your technology company when you have a problem, over the long term this is most certainly not the case. Doing so can increase your IT support costs exponentially because small problems can quickly grow and cause catastrophic effects across your network resulting in large IT support and repair costs.
These unexpected costs will also likely come at the worst time possible because that's just the way it goes. Having smaller regular maintenance payments you expect and budget for is a much better plan for all.
In addition you need to calculate the cost of downtime for Business. What does an hour, a day, or even a week cost your company in terms of lost revenue and damaged relationships with your clients?
Let's take for example your network server. If you do not have regular maintenance performed on your server such as Microsoft security update installation, Virus definition updates, reviewing error and event logs and very important... checking to make sure your backups are working and can be restored from, then you can get into trouble very fast.
I'm sure that most of you reading this have at some point in your life lost a file you could not recover. Imagine for a moment you lose all your business documents for your entire company. You may think to yourself "No problem, I've got a backup" only to find out that because nobody has actually been testing your backup on a regular basis, they don't work and haven't backed up in over a year.
On top of that because nobody has been doing any maintenance or monitoring of your server, nobody has noticed that one of the drives on your server has failed so there is no longer any redundancy and one more drive failure (which could happen at any moment) means EVERYTHING is gone.
I have just recently seen a company who shall remain nameless get infected with Cryptolocker. They felt confident that their backups would save them so went ahead and deleted all the encrypted files. When attempting to restore the data, they quickly and frightfully realized that their backups had not been functioning since 2012. Think of the cost to this company!
I'm sure I don't need to finish this story for you to understand how detrimental this scenario could be. Bottom line is a monthly preventative maintenance plan with a trusted IT company could have saved their entire business by catching these issues before they ever caused any downtime or financial loss.
If you are a business owner who thinks that you're saving money by saying no to regular maintenance, take it from someone who works with businesses every day. You need to change your mindset and realize the potentially catastrophic effects making the decision to run your business without preventative maintenance for your technology can have.
Dylan Hodge http://www.biztekguy.com/ezinearticles
BizTekGuy.com</a> helps you make those important decisions about the small business technology, service, sales and mindset that helps run your business.
Check out our Facebook page to get loads more free tools, tricks and money saving tips for your business. Give us a like if you like: [http://biztekguy.com/ezine-facebook]http://biztekguy.com/ezine-facebook.
Article Source: [http://EzineArticles.com/?The-Benefits-Of-Preventative-Maintenance-For-Your-Technology&id=9364089] The Benefits Of Preventative Maintenance For Your Technology
Although it may seem less expensive each month to only call your technology company when you have a problem, over the long term this is most certainly not the case. Doing so can increase your IT support costs exponentially because small problems can quickly grow and cause catastrophic effects across your network resulting in large IT support and repair costs.
These unexpected costs will also likely come at the worst time possible because that's just the way it goes. Having smaller regular maintenance payments you expect and budget for is a much better plan for all.
In addition you need to calculate the cost of downtime for Business. What does an hour, a day, or even a week cost your company in terms of lost revenue and damaged relationships with your clients?
Let's take for example your network server. If you do not have regular maintenance performed on your server such as Microsoft security update installation, Virus definition updates, reviewing error and event logs and very important... checking to make sure your backups are working and can be restored from, then you can get into trouble very fast.
I'm sure that most of you reading this have at some point in your life lost a file you could not recover. Imagine for a moment you lose all your business documents for your entire company. You may think to yourself "No problem, I've got a backup" only to find out that because nobody has actually been testing your backup on a regular basis, they don't work and haven't backed up in over a year.
On top of that because nobody has been doing any maintenance or monitoring of your server, nobody has noticed that one of the drives on your server has failed so there is no longer any redundancy and one more drive failure (which could happen at any moment) means EVERYTHING is gone.
I have just recently seen a company who shall remain nameless get infected with Cryptolocker. They felt confident that their backups would save them so went ahead and deleted all the encrypted files. When attempting to restore the data, they quickly and frightfully realized that their backups had not been functioning since 2012. Think of the cost to this company!
I'm sure I don't need to finish this story for you to understand how detrimental this scenario could be. Bottom line is a monthly preventative maintenance plan with a trusted IT company could have saved their entire business by catching these issues before they ever caused any downtime or financial loss.
If you are a business owner who thinks that you're saving money by saying no to regular maintenance, take it from someone who works with businesses every day. You need to change your mindset and realize the potentially catastrophic effects making the decision to run your business without preventative maintenance for your technology can have.
Dylan Hodge http://www.biztekguy.com/ezinearticles
BizTekGuy.com</a> helps you make those important decisions about the small business technology, service, sales and mindset that helps run your business.
Check out our Facebook page to get loads more free tools, tricks and money saving tips for your business. Give us a like if you like: [http://biztekguy.com/ezine-facebook]http://biztekguy.com/ezine-facebook.
Article Source: [http://EzineArticles.com/?The-Benefits-Of-Preventative-Maintenance-For-Your-Technology&id=9364089] The Benefits Of Preventative Maintenance For Your Technology
