Computer Maintenance prevents costly repairs and downtime

As with most forms of maintenance, computer maintenance is a crucial investment for any company looking to maintain the healthiest bottom line possible. When computers go without maintenance, they begin to behave erratically, slow down, crash unexpectedly. Components wear out early, data is lost, and clients experience outages, downtime, and delays. All of it easily avoidable with basic upkeep—all of it far more expensive for your company than maintenance. Let’s take a closer look at each way computer maintenance saves your company money:

Productivity

Employees can’t work to their fullest potential if their systems are bogged down with adware, unreliable due to unmaintained hardware, and running outdated software missing key features and improvements. By keeping your computer systems well maintained and running at peak efficiency, not only do you equip your team with the best possible tools for the jobs at hand, you minimize morale-sapping computer failures and the need for constant tech support.

Hardware longevity

It’s a simple truth for nearly anything you care to name: basic maintenance saves money over time. It holds as true in computers as it does in people, homes, air conditioners, or cars. For computers, maintenance comes in two key forms: physical maintenance and software maintenance. Physical maintenance is simple; clearing out dust, making sure ventilation is working properly, etc. Software maintenance can be more complicated, covering everything from software updates to malware removal to basic cleanup of unnecessary garbage data. Combining both adds years to the lifespan of every computer in your network, saving you a huge amount of money over time.

Downtime

How much downtime can your company afford in a day? A week? A month? A year? How much does it cost when your systems come down unexpectedly because of a crash, a hardware failure, or some other problem that regular maintenance could have helped you avoid? Even if you can afford downtime, there’s a world of difference in the impact of scheduled downtime for thorough maintenance and unplanned maintenance you’re forced into by a system failure.

Lost data

When a system fails unexpectedly due to poor upkeep, data will almost inevitably be lost. Even if you have a healthy cloud-based backup system in place, it can only do so much—a few minutes of lost data here and there isn’t a disaster, but it is a pain. A pain for your team, a pain for customers affected by the loss, a pain for your bottom line.

Security breaches

Basic system maintenance also plays a critical role in maintaining the security of your data. While no system is perfect, the vast majority of vulnerabilities within your software will be patched away shortly after being revealed to the wider world. Un-updated software on your systems means more than a few gaps in your security, it means gaps which are well-known and thoroughly documented by anyone and everyone with an interest in bypassing your security.

Client experience

It’d be irresponsible to describe the potential downsides of skimping on maintenance without taking a moment to discuss the experience on the client end. When something goes wrong on your end, it almost always means a corresponding inconvenience for a customer. When those problems stack up, and become a trend, your customers notice. That’s when your reputation begins to take a hit. Computer maintenance is directly tied to the actual and perceived reliability of your company—and that, in turn, is tied directly to your bottom line.

Computer maintenance is about reliability and control. You’re going to spend money on your computer systems to keep them functioning one way or another–so be proactive about it.