Few organizations want to think about what might happen to them if a crisis event arises. Taking the time to set out a clear recovery strategy is essential, but some law firms aren’t following this necessary step or don’t have a plan that adequately covers their operations. Rather than waiting around for disaster to strike, you will want to ask if you could pay the price of downtime and what actions you should be pursuing now to avoid this situation.
Downtime costs on the rise
If your important systems went down, how quickly could you get them back up? Every minute of downtime costs money, and the price is continually rising. According to the Silver Linings report by the Solicitors Regulation Authority, law firms might pay up to $12,500 per hour for downtime. As DataBarracks noted, this number represents the entire sector, meaning that the costs might be lower for your particular firm. Regardless, the expenses associated with inactive IT services and hardware are on the rise, and many legal practices simply cannot afford to pay these charges.
Downtime costs are steadily rising.Other prices to consider
Downtime itself is dangerous, but there are costs that come on top of it that can truly bring down a business. For one, without access to critical systems and resources, employees will not be as productive as they should be. Lost productivity can lead to missed revenue opportunities and impact your overall bottom line. MSPMentor contributor Dan Kobialka noted that you will also rack up costs for compliance and regulatory violations, recreating lost data and notifying clients of a breach. When clients are notified of prolonged downtime, it will result in a loss of reputation and cause even long-term clients to consider alternatives.
Paying money for downtime itself is considerable, but when you factor in compliance needs, loss of clients and missed revenue generation, downtime becomes much more costly to your firm’s stability. It can take a significant amount of time to fully come back from a breach or downtime event, and expenses from these situations will further hinder your practice’s growth and capabilities.
“A capable provider should have a full understanding of your industry.”
Team up with an IT provider that specializes in law firms
When partnering with IT solutions designed for law firms, like those from Afinety, you will have direct expert support during difficult situations and will not be responsible for maintaining your system. A capable provider should have a full understanding of your industry and your practice’s particular requirements. We tailor our solutions to fit your needs and provide 99.999 percent uptime with our Afinety Cloud Platform solution. Firms can also take advantage of our 24/7/365 monitoring and support capabilities to identify unusual network behavior and prevent issues from occurring.
Downtime isn’t something that any organization wants to experience or pay for. Being hit with such an event can significantly damage your firm and drain your available resources. Teaming up with a partner like Afinety will help outfit your practice with IT solutions that are not only configured to your needs, but also accessible anywhere at anytime. Contact Afinety today to see how our offerings can help you overcome downtime.