Most firm owners ask the same question when evaluating IT support:
"How much is this going to cost?"
At Active Computer Technologies, our managed IT services typically range from $165-$185 per workstation per month.
On paper, that may seem like a significant expense. But the better question is:
What's the cost of not having the right IT support when something goes wrong?
For a firm or company with 20 employees, quality IT support might cost roughly $3,300-$3,700 per month.
Now compare that to:
- A day of company-wide downtime
- A failed backup that prevents recovery
- A ransomware incident – most cost $100,000+
- Lost billable hours
- Missed customer opportunities
- Emergency consulting fees
And NONE of these scenarios are incredibly fun or profitable…
Most firms are surprised to learn that one single technology disruption can cost more than months of proactive IT management.
The firms that suffer the biggest financial losses aren't always the ones spending the least on IT. More often, they're the ones operating on assumptions that crises won’t happen to us. Denial can cost your firm A LOT!
We know you're not reading this because you want to get better at recovering from IT disasters. You want to keep your firm or business running smoothly and avoid them altogether.
After all, the best recovery plan is the one you never have to use.
Let us help you!
Here are four assumptions that regularly cost businesses far more than quality IT support ever will:
Assumption #1: "We're Backed Up"
Here's a scary question:
If your server crashed right now, how confident are you that everything would be back up and running tomorrow?
Most firms answer that question with, "Pretty confident."
Unfortunately, "pretty confident" isn't a recovery strategy.
Too many firms mistake backup reports for proof that their data is safe. But a backup that's never been tested is like a pilot buying a parachute, throwing it in a closet for five years, glancing at it periodically and assuming it would save their life in an emergency.
Yet many firms implement security controls once and never verify they still work.
We recommend cybersecurity penetration testing so you don't discover there's a problem when it's too late.
When backups fail, the costs pile up fast:
- Downtime
- Lost productivity
- Lost revenue
- Lost data
- Lost customer trust
The firms that recover quickly aren't the ones with backups.
They're the ones that know their backups work!
Assumption #2: ‘Someone would tell us if there was a problem’
You can spend big bucks on the latest monitoring tool that's really good at catching problems fast and alerting you immediately. Confusing detection with protection is an assumption that costs businesses money.
A weather alert can tell you a hurricane is coming. It doesn’t board up your windows or move your family to safety. The alert is useful only if you know what to do next.
Your monitoring tool works the same way. It tells you something is wrong. What happens after that alert goes off is up to you.
Assumption #3: ‘Our team knows what to do’
Everything runs smoothly until something breaks.
It's late Friday afternoon, a critical system goes down, and suddenly everyone's asking the same questions:
Who's in charge? What's the priority? How long will this take?
Without a documented recovery plan, even great teams end up scrambling.
A fire drill isn't about expecting a fire. It's about knowing exactly what to do if one happens.
IT disruptions are no different.
The real cost of an outage isn't always the technology failure. It's the time lost while everyone figures out what to do next.
Assumption #4: 'It won't happen to us'
Nobody thinks they'll be the one. Until they are.
When you're focused on growth, customers and keeping things moving, disruption feels like something that happens to other companies. Not yours.
Unfortunately, what goes around eventually comes around.
Most disruptions are ordinary. An employee clicks a bad link in a phishing email; a power outage hits or a piece of hardware finally gives out.
The question isn't whether something unexpected will happen. It's whether you'll be ready when it does.
The firms that recover fastest aren't the ones that avoided the disruption. They're the ones that expected it.
At the end of the day…
We want you to have more gain and no loss, whether loss means money or opportunity. We want to help you to thrive.
You can't block a punch you didn't prepare for
In our experience, it's never the big dramatic event that catches firms off guard. It's the ordinary ones that happen on a Wednesday when nobody's expecting it.
The good news is that most of these risks can be addressed before they become business problems. And that's exactly what we help businesses do.
We offer 15-minute discovery calls to help business owners like you understand where they stand. We'll walk through your backups, recovery process and business continuity plans to identify what's been tested, what hasn't and where gaps may exist.
Call us at 469-653-0517 or visit our website www.activecomputers.com – we are here to serve!
