IT is a difficult field to manage in the long run. Any number of things can go wrong with the technology at hand and IT is tasked with solving as many of those issues as they can. This puts a lot of pressure on IT support and enforces the ideal that they should be as thorough and careful as possible when it comes to managing the company’s technological assets. These are just a few of the ways that mistakes from IT support can cost your business in the short and long term.
Downtime
When IT support isn’t at its strongest, it shows. The delay can cost you more than you think and it only gets worse the longer it takes. With IT doing what it can, some major functions are going unused, meaning loss on revenue. It might seem clear to some that when IT isn’t doing its job on time that the business suffers, but there is much more to it than you might think. Imagine that a hospital login system crashed unexpectedly one day. The doctors and nurses can’t get in to the system, meaning that digital files and paperwork are locked away for the time being. IT is called in to handle the situation, but they are either slow or inefficient. After a few hours, only the nurses are able to log back in, meaning that the doctors are still unable to get to crucial information that they don’t have on file. The hours tick by and lives are potentially damaged because IT wasn’t fast enough or efficient enough to get the job done on time. It’s an extreme example, but something similar could happen to your business and when the burden falls to IT support, they are the mortar to your foundation, keeping everything in place and making sure there are no cracks showing. If they aren’t able to do their job in a timely manner, it can have serious repercussions.
Price Incline
This is more obvious than the others, but things are going to cost more to fix the longer they are offline. If IT isn’t doing the best job possible, nothing will get accomplished and your business will fall behind. Not just that, but it will cost you quite a hefty sum to make sure the problem is fixed and doesn’t happen again. If IT takes too long, you will need to incentivize customers to come back to your services somehow and that is lost money. You will need to pay for different methods of fixing a problem that might return due to mistakes made, which is also lost money. The price you pay for IT support can be a moderate, standard amount, or a bloated load of cash that quickly accrues as problems continually pile on.
Reputation
You have a certain reputation to uphold. Clients are expecting the very best you have to offer everytime they come to you for something and you are obligated to provide your very best. When IT support is dragging their heels on an issue or can’t figure out how to solve something, you are suddenly unable to provide exactly what is expected of you, leaving you twiddling your thumbs in hopes that things speed up. Maybe IT doesn’t have the materials they need to finish the task on time, maybe they are understaffed, or maybe they simply haven’t seen an issue like this before and need to start from scratch to figure it out. Whatever the case might be, there needs to be a backup plan in place just in case. You don’t want people to think your services are slow or always broken, because word of mouth can make or break a business in some cases. You want to show them the very best you have to offer at all times, which means having the best IT support you can afford to make sure issues are stopped before they get out of hand.