Many companies make large investments in software and hardware, but have a habit of overlooking the aspect of investing in technical support to protect the investment.
- How will hardware or software performance affect current projects and their deadlines?
- Who will provide support to hardware and software when problems arise?
- What are the financial implications of a system failure on the business?
- What steps are in place to protect hardware outside of its standard warranty period?
When a significant IT failure incident occurs there is a consequential loss of profits and amassing of costs. The cost of IT failure includes lost business, lost profit, the cost of repair; the fixed and variable operating costs wasted during the downtime and associated costs that are felt throughout the business.
It will therefore come as little surprise that a recent study suggests that over 40% of businesses suffering complete IT systems failures cease trading within two to three years with over 85% citing the IT failure as the reason for the business failing.
Is the cost justifiable?
Hardware Failure
A complete server failure, requiring the need for a new server, data replication, setup and configuration could result in a minimum of three working days of downtime.
The average cost of an employee to an organisation has recently been estimated at £40 per hour. Assuming a company employs ten staff this equates to £400 per hour or (assuming a 7.5 hour working day) £3,000 per day.
If this company were to suffer a complete IT systems failure, the cost to the organisation in unproductive man hours would be £9,000. This of course does not take into account the associated costs of getting the IT systems working.
Software Problems
With any business critical software, technical support is essential. This may be provided by a CAD/IT Manager, however one could argue that finding solutions to high-level IT or CAD problems is not the most effective use of their time and, when issues do arise, what other tasks suffer whilst a solution or workaround is sought and does the time taken affect critical project deadlines?
Assuming the average cost of a CAD/IT Manager to an organisation is £50 per hour and a solution or workaround takes 6 hours to solve, the cost of utilising the CAD Manager’s time to solve this problem would be £300.
However the associated costs whilst a solution or workaround is found could be significantly higher. Could the problem be significant enough to stop the design team working and if so could impending deadlines be compromised? |
