InfoBusiness 2.0

Special Report:

What Every Small Business Owner Must Know About Protecting And Preserving Their Company’s Critical Data And Computer Systems

 

If You Depend On Your Computer Network To Run Your Business, This Is One Report You DON’T Want To Overlook!

 

   This report will outline in plain, non-technical English common mistakes that many small business owners make with their computer network that cost them thousands in lost sales, productivity, and computer repair bills, as well as providing an easy, proven way to reduce or completely eliminate the financial expense and frustration of these oversights.

 

You’ll Discover:

 

§  The single most expensive mistake most small business owners make when it comes to protecting their company data.

§  The universal misconception business owners have about their computer networks, and how it can end up costing between $9,000 to as much as $60,000 in damages.

§  6 Critical security measures every small business should have in place.

§  How to greatly reduce – or even completely eliminate – frustrating crashes, slow performance, and other annoying computer problems.

§  How to avoid expensive computer repair bills and get all the computer support you need for a low, fixed monthly rate.

 

Dear Colleague,

 

   Have you ever lost an hour of work on your computer?

   Now imagine if you lost days or weeks of work – or imagine losing your client database, financial records, and all of the work files your company has ever produced or compiled.

   Imagine what would happen if your network went down for days, where you couldn’t access e-mail or the information on your PC. How frustrating would that be?

   Or, what if a major storm, flood, or fire destroyed your office and all of your files? Or if a virus wiped out your server…do you have an emergency recovery plan in place that you feel confident in?

   How quickly do you think you could recover, if at all?

   Many small business owners tend to ignore or forget about taking steps to secure their company’s network from these types of catastrophes until disaster strikes. By then it’s too late and the damage is done.

 

 

But That Could Never Happen To Me!
(And Other Lies Business Owners Like To Believe About Their Businesses…)

 

   After working with over a 100 of small and mid-size businesses in the Greater Toronto Area, we found that 6 out of 10 businesses will experience some type of major network or technology disaster that will end up costing them between $9,000 and $60,000 in repairs and restoration costs on average. 

 

   That doesn’t even include lost productivity, sales, and client goodwill that can be damaged when a company can’t operate or fulfill on its promises due to technical problems.

 

   While it may be difficult to determine the actual financial impact computer problems have on your business, you can’t deny the fact that they do have a negative effect. If you’ve ever had your business grind to a screeching halt because you and your employees could not access the data or systems necessary for operations, you must have some idea of the frustration and financial loss to your business even if you haven’t put a pencil to figuring out the exact cost.

 

Take a look at these statistics:

 

• Companies experience an average of 501 hours of network downtime every year, and the overall downtime costs an average of 3.6% of annual revenue.  (Source: The Costs of Enterprise Downtime, Infonetics Research)
  
  
• 93% of companies that lost their data center for 10 days or more due to a disaster filed for bankruptcy within one year of the disaster, and 50% filed for bankruptcy immediately. (Source: National Archives & Records Administration in Washington.)
  
  
• 20% of small to medium businesses will suffer a major disaster causing loss of critical data every 5 years. (Source: Richmond House Group)
  
  
• This year, 40% of small to medium businesses that manage their own network and use the Internet for more than e-mail will have their network accessed by a hacker, and more than 50% won’t even know they were attacked. (Source: Gartner Group)
  
  
• Of those companies participating in the Contingency Planning & Management Cost of Downtime Survey: 46% said each hour of downtime would cost their companies up to $50,000, 28% said each hour would cost between $51,000 and $250,000, 18% said each hour would cost between $251,000 and $1 million, and 8% said it would cost their companies more than $1million per hour. (Source: Cost of Downtime Survey Results, 2001.)
  
  
• Cyber-criminals stole an average of $900 from each of 3 million Americans in the past year, and that doesn’t include the hundreds of thousands of PCs rendered useless by spyware. (Source: Gartner Group)

 

What These Failures Are REALLY Costing Your Business

  

   Even if you don’t factor in the soft costs of lost productivity, there is a hard cost of repairing and restoring your network. Most major network repairs will require a minimum of four to eight hours on average to get the network back up and running. Plus, most consultants cannot get on-site to resolve the problem for 24 to 48 hours. That means your network could be down for one to two days.

 

   Since the average computer consultant charges over $100 per hour plus a trip fee and a surcharge if it’s an emergency, the average cost of these repairs is $600 to $1,000; and that doesn’t even include any software or hardware costs that may also be required. Over a year, this results in $1,800 to $3,000 in costs without even considering hardware and software costs, or other soft costs of lost sales and work hours. Of course, those numbers quickly multiply with larger, more complex networks.

   What’s most exasperating about this situation is that 100% of these disasters and restoration costs could have been completely avoided or greatly mitigated easily and inexpensively with a little planning and proactive maintenance.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 15th, 2008 at 13:15 and is filed under business, it. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.