6 Reasons You Need Preventative Maintenance on Your Hardware
When working with small businesses, we so often hear “Technology is great until it doesn’t work.” When it comes to your business, there is nothing worse than downtime because your technology isn’t working. Well how do you keep your technology working? After all, no one wants to be stuck in the stone age, right? The answer is maintenance.
There are two mindsets in the world when it comes to maintenance, reactive and preventative:
- Reactive maintenance goes with the idea of “If it isn’t broken, why fix it?" While this can save money in the short term, in the long run it can end up costing considerably more - especially for a small business.
- Preventative maintenance, on the other hand, is doing regular upkeep to technology and systems. This includes updates, patches, security, verifying backup data, scans, etc.
Here are 6 reasons why you should invest the time and effort in preventative maintenance:
1. Decreased Equipment Downtime
When you take time to care for your systems and check over all hardware regularly, you find that the time required to do those 'checkups' is considerably less than if you worked a system to the failure point. Rather than having to find a replacement and integrate that system, you are able to spend a scheduled amount of time working on something else. It helps you avoid unspecified amounts of work and costly crashes.
2. Conservation of Assets
Computer equipment can often be an expensive investment for small businesses. However, the better you care for your equipment, the longer it will last. Preventative maintenance prolongs the life of your equipment so you can get more hours out of it. This results in reduced costs and increased profits.
3. Cost Savings
When it comes to maintenance, you often have to perform a cost analysis. The question becomes "Do I want to pay X now to maintain the system, or pay 5X three weeks from now when something crashes?" While it's true that preventative maintenance does cost time and money, it's also true that the other option is to have machines or systems unexpectedly break. Furthermore, these breaks always seem to be at the worst possible time.
4. Improved Safety
Accidents happen in the workplace - mice chewing on cables, a dropped box, a coffee cup too close to an outlet. The list can go on and on. Regular downtime and review of systems not only improves performance and the life of hardware, but it can also spot potential safety hazards. Those cords that got damaged? While they might be still working, they're also a potential spot for electrocution. The cooling fan that got blocked by a recent move around the office could easily cause a fire within the case. These are just a few examples of many things that could occur and can be overcome by regular inspections.
5. Increased Equipment Efficiency
You've already seen increases in safety and the lifetime of your hardware. Have you considered your software, though? By taking the regular time to do updates, patches and tests, you can ensure that your software is not only kept up-to-date, but also that it is working at maximum efficiency.
6. Improved Reliability
Keeping up to date also means that things like your firewalls and other security protocols are keeping out potential dangers to your company. These dangers include hackers, viruses and ransomware to name a few. Spending the time to keep all of your software up to date means that you are investing in the safety and reliability of your systems and your company - which in the end is a bonus for you.
If all of these sound like benefits you'd like your small business to enjoy, we can help. We offer Tech Up-To-Date, a monthly preventative maintenance package for your hardware and software. Don’t wait until your technology systems are failing - contact us today.
