Your business is unlikely to operate 24 hours a day. Some do of course, as a hotel with paying guests is never fully closed, but most that adhere to the regular schedule will have lapses in operational capacity thanks to the very necessary routine of a standard workweek.
But while you account for this, unexpected downtime can have a huge and terrible impact on your company. Sometimes it’s out of your hands of course – you can’t help if a snowstorm keeps all your manufacturing staff home for the day, or you can’t prevent a nasty flu from causing most of your managers to call in sick and thus suspending your productivity.
Yet if you can, systemizing the prevention of downtime is only worthwihle. It helps you avoid annoying B2B clients or customers, and also delaying your very tight schedule, which always has a long-term and frustrating knock-on effect.
In this post, we’ll discuss four tips for minimizing, or (if you’re lucky) even abolishing downtime, for long periods anyway:
IT Management & Upkeep
It’s not hard to cry out at our modern dependence on tech when it’s not working for you, and making your business inoperable . If your IT systems crash, you’re not just dealing with an inconvenience, because you could be looking at lost revenue, missed deadlines, or security risks that cause even bigger problems down the line.
The best way to prevent this is to stay ahead of issues and use an IT specialist such as Eberly Systems to help outsource any uptime and issues. They’ll usually take care of your maintenance, backups, and updates which do have an impact. Cloud-based systems can also add an extra layer of reliability, so one hardware failure doesn’t take down your entire operation and you can access it from multiple different devices on different networks.
Temporary Staff & Outsourcing
You can’t help people being sick and sometimes accidents do happen. Multiply that by a few people, and things start to stop, which is where having a backup plan can be a good preparation.
That’s where having a backup plan makes life so much easier. Keeping a good agency on call or having a few freelancers in your back pocket means you can fill in the gaps when needed, and it doesn’t need to be permanent, but a nice approach you take when you’d have to suspend operations otherwise.
Solid Equipment Maintenance
There’s nothing worse than a piece of equipment breaking down right when you need it most. It doesn’t matter if it’s a production machine, a delivery van, or just the office printer refusing to cooperate, that kind of delay is a pain nobody needs.
The best way to avoid this mess is through continual maintenance, and sticking to a simple schedule for servicing your equipment will help you catch those issues early before they turn into full-blown disasters, even if having a technician on call and with quotation fees is essential.
Remote Working
Not every job can be done from home, but when it’s an option, it’s a great alternative to offer. If a storm makes roads unsafe or an emergency keeps people from coming in, remote access lets them keep things moving instead of sitting around waiting. It only really works if you’ve got the right setup, though, and so making certain cCloud storage, VPNs, and decent communication tools are in place is essential preparation.
With this advice, you’re sure to minimize or even abolish operational downtime as needed.
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