According to the Uptime Institute, human error accounts for nearly 70% of all downtime incidents. And as you may know, downtime can cost as much as $100,000 per hour for some companies. But why is this downtime so expensive?
Downtime costs many companies a fortune in many ways including loss of revenue, damage to reputation, and the inability of employees to work productively. In order to prevent human error from causing downtime incidents, some companies have implemented formal processes as well as automated systems that notify technicians when something isn’t working properly.
Let’s learn more about downtime including its costly nature, types, and how to avoid it.
Downtime Is Extremely Costly
There are many ways downtime can be costly to businesses. Some of the common ones include:
- Lost revenue – This is the most obvious way downtime costs a business money.
- Customer frustration – Customers will be very frustrated if you can’t quickly provide goods and services.
- Loss of reputation – If your website is down for an extended period, your reputation will falter.
- Loss of productivity – Lack of access to systems means employee output shrinks or disappears altogether.
- Data loss – Customer data is often irreplaceable if you’re not taking regular backups.
Since human error is majorly to blame for downtime in companies, let’s look at a few things you can do to make sure human error isn’t a source of downtime.
Avoiding Downtime Caused by Human Error
It’s wise to implement plans now, before downtime affects your business. Consider the following:
- Ensure that all systems are backed up regularly
- Invest in rigid training for all employees
- Regularly test and audit your employees
- Consider hiring a firm to conduct a risk audit for your business
- Ensure that you have task redundancy in key areas. I.e. consider ensuring that no task can only be completed by one person
- Adopt hardware and software that’s easy enough for anyone to use.
Many businesses find that adopting simple solutions is one of the best ways to mitigate human error. If systems are easy to use, it’s less likely that people will make costly mistakes that result in downtime. If you’re looking secure USB drives and management tools that are some of the easiest-to-use, consider DataLocker as you develop your security strategy.