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Every organization depends on their information systems to be up and available when they need them.
Some businesses simply can’t function at all without them.
When a business inevitably needs to patch their software or perform other maintenance, it can cause problems when employees need these systems to be available.
This month, we’ll talk about the strategy behind proactive maintenance and how it helps businesses avoid downtime in multiple ways.
In the context of a business, downtime is any amount of time where employees cannot perform critical business functions and can’t work toward generating revenue.
In terms of information technology, it is when a user or users can’t access the computing resources a company has invested in.
Downtime is one of the costliest of business-related problems and has a tendency to affect operational effectiveness long after the incident is over.
Proactive maintenance is a maintenance strategy that corrects the source of underlying equipment conditions.
The goal of proactive maintenance is to reduce unplanned downtime, equipment failure, and risks associated with operating faulty equipment.
it’s a close cousin of preventive maintenance, and that means it can deliver many of the same benefits, including helping you avoid all the costs and frustrations of unscheduled downtime.
To maximize the uptime of your business’ technology, it needs to be managed and maintained.
If you do this in a reactive manner—that is, fixing technology problems as they arise—downtime-induced losses are going to be more pronounced.
However, if you are able to manage and maintain your information systems before they have a chance to break down, you can maximize uptime and see more productivity as a result.
The good news is that you don’t have to make a decision. In fact, when used together, they tend to complement one another.
First, you create a PM calendar that includes all of your inspections and duties, based on the instructions that came with the assets and equipment.
It’s similar to buying a car and following the manufacturer’s advice for when to change the oil and undergo basic tune-ups.
However, after you have a sufficient amount of solid data, you can fine-tune your PMs.
You can go back in and adjust the inspections and tasks and move them around based on your own experience with the assets and equipment.
But it’s not a one-time thing. Over the entire life cycle of any given asset, you periodically adjust everything to better match the most current data.
The drawback is that there’s always the chance the asset didn’t need that maintenance at all.
With preventive maintenance, you can run the risk of drifting into “over maintenance,” where you’re doing work you didn’t need to do, wasting resources.
Using cutting-edge technology, IT administrators can effectively monitor every piece of technology and that allows them to troubleshoot issues before they ever cause any downtime.
Technology doesn’t always run as intended, but getting ahead of IT problems can save having a litany of headaches including: downtime, cost increases, loss of revenue, and more.
The biggest benefit of being proactive is continuity. You keep your business going without any unplanned downtime.
If you are able to have no interruptions, no system failures-—and just uptime—you are going to have a better opportunity to find success.
This is largely because when there are no interruptions, people tend to see their performance improve and be more productive.
If you think of your business’ information systems like your car, it can provide you with the best example of how proactivity can help sustain solid operations.
If you keep maintenance up on your car and don’t let little issues turn into catastrophic problems, your car will last longer and be more reliable. The same goes for your IT.
Infradapt can assist you in all IT needs. If you need to prevent disasters, we got you. If you need new equipment, best believe we got you. Anything you need “we got”.
If you would like to learn more about how Infradapt stays proactive to help our clients accomplish more and save money, give us a call today at 800-394-2301.
