Productivity and profits often go hand in hand so any periods of downtime in your business are likely to prove costly.
One of your primary goals has to be reducing the prospect of any type of downtime, and the good news is that you already have the tools and technology to hand to achieve this aim.
Here is a look the cost of downtime and why it is so bad for your business. There is an overview of how to identify and implement ways to improve productivity and a few tips to help boost efficiency.
Unplanned downtime is damaging to your bottom line
Anecdotal evidence gathered from a wide range of different types of small businesses, tend to suggest that the average company will suffer at least seven hours or more of unplanned downtime every year.
That might not sound too much on the face of it, but even that level of downtime equates to an average loss of about $100,000 in revenue, which puts the problem more sharply into focus.
Downtime depresses revenue and if you are operating as an eCommerce business where you rely on a flow of internet orders then application downtime is going to be particularly damaging.
If customers are unable to reach your website or interact with you in any way, they are not buying your product.
Finding a solution
There isn’t always going to be a magic pill solution that resolves all of your issues and reduces downtime, as it is often a case of employing a series of different initiatives that then have a cumulative effect of increasing productivity and reducing downtime.
For example, if you are losing valuable time and money when your site goes offline for any period of time, a cloud-based backup to restore data and having a disaster recovery plan in place, are two ways to lessen the impact.
These initiatives should minimize downtime and get your business up and running again as quickly as possible.
Improving personal productivity
If every person within your business has a series of minor bad habits that are making them less productive, it could add up to a few hours of lost time and creates a situation where you are potentially suffering downtime without even realizing it.
A classic productivity faux-pas is to spend the day constantly checking your emails and trying to respond to each one as they come in.
If the emails are sales orders flowing and important to the business then they need to be actioned immediately, but it when you are constantly switching between tasks just to check your inbox for general messages, that can affect productivity levels.
A good solution would be to set an allocated time for checking your general emails and turn off desktop notifications so that you don’t get distracted by the sound of every email hitting your inbox.
Another good way to improve personal productivity would be to use a call recorder from Apalon Apps so that you can review your phone calls and remind yourself of important points without having to be distracted by searching for handwritten notes.
Use technology to connect and collaborate with everyone in the workforce and look at small ways to improve productivity that could make a bid difference to how much downtime you suffer.
David Aaron is knowledgable when it comes to using technology to boost your business. He shares his tips and support online through forums, social media sites and his articles which appear on a range of business blogs.