Financial Benefits

Have you calculated how much you spend on computer support?  Support that is less than ideal and still leaves your business completely at risk?

The $2,700 “hidden” annual support costs

Without really being aware, most small businesses are already spending a considerable amount on their annual computer supports costs – and $2,730 is probably around that amount.  This $2,730 seems pretty high, but is it?

How much do you currently spend?  You probably don’t know, but to a more or lesser degree, every business takes some level of protection against problems arising. 

Let’s look at what a typical small business does – and then you can compare this with what you do.

We need to look at the 3 areas of security, helpdesk/support and backup and the labour and other associated costs.

Security

• To update your virus protection software, firewall, anti-Trojan software;
• To ensure they are all properly configured
• A weekly computer scan is undertaken of all files to ensure they are not infected with a virus or Trojan
• To complete a weekly registry scan
• Review Microsoft patches and apply to your computer where appropriate.

Minimum Time – 20 minutes per week

Labour rate - $30 per hour

Annual Cost - $520

Help/Support – has 2 components

1) Time wasted trying to work out “how to do” something with a Microsoft Office product or related to the Windows operating system, and then working around the issue instead of solving it.

Minimum Time – 1 hour per month

Labour Rate - $30 per hour

Annual Cost - $360

2) Resolving an actual incident.  At one end of the spectrum, if your computer is stolen or for some reason it becomes unworkable, to purchase a new one and get it back to the previous status could take 3 days to possibly even 2 weeks.

At the other end, and a typical example would be your computer becomes infected with a virus that needs to be removed.  By the time you have tried to delete the file and then found a technician to work on the problem, delivered your computer to the technician who hopefully can fix the problem later that day – a whole day is wasted.

A typical small business will probably have 3 such problems a year – with each losing a day of work.

Assuming you take it to the technician and it takes him one hour to fix the costs would be:

Your time – 3 x 1 day (8 hours) – 24 hours

Your “labour’ rate - $40 per hour

Technician’s time – 3 x 1 hour – 3 hours

Technician’s labour rate - $80 per hour  

Annual Cost - $1,200

Backup

At a very minimum, you need to backup your critical data files on a daily basis.

Minimum Time – 10 minutes per day (assume 5 day week)

Labour rate - $15 per hour (for a bookkeeper)

Annual Cost - $650

TOTAL ANNUAL COST - $2,730

So how much are you already paying each year for a time-consuming and inferior outcome.  For a “service” that still leaves you gambling with your business!

For only $900 per year ($75 per month for “PC*Ensure”), you can have a fully automated and comprehensive service delivered to each of your computers on a daily basis – without you having to worry whether your virus or firewall definitions are up-to-date or properly configured.  And without having to do daily backups and have the data stored safely offsite and, preferably, on a “mirrored” site.

And, at the same time, Save Yourself $1,830 per year!