One of the most challenging times for any IT consultant is getting an emergency call from a client with a totally shut-down office because of a systems outage.  If you have been working as an IT consultant for a while, you know that small business technology is tricky; your clients expect everything to be perfect, but don’t necessarily have a huge technology budget to handle unexpected problems and even general fault tolerance.

The IT Consultant Needs to Make Clients Aware of Downtime Costs

As an IT consultant, you need clients to know how important the protection from downtime is for their businesses.  Use the following two-stepped approach:

1.    Help clients determine the real cost of downtime;

2.    Strongly suggest investment by clients in spare PC hardware.

The IT Consultant:  What is the Cost of Downtime?

If your clients have more than a few PCs, they will eventually get a service history of which types of hardware go into disrepair most often.  They will also be able to learn from you as their IT consultant how to ask their PC vendor to give them replacement parts under warranty and how to figure out the time it will take to estimate the time to get replacement parts to their office and installed.

IT Consultant:  The Value of System Downtime

A quick calculation for figuring out the cost of system downtime is related to the hourly cost of system downtime.  The hourly cost of system downtime for clients equals projected annual revenue/(business days per year multiplied by the hours in a business day).

The IT Consultant:  A Tool for Your Website

If you know something about JavaScript, the calculator for determining system downtime can be a great marketing piece to put on the home page of your website.  If you use this tool, be sure to give credit back to the SmallBizTechTalk website.

Downtime is a major point for any IT consultant to discuss when building relationships with clients.

Blogged By:  Computer Consulting 101