If your small business has more than a handful of PCs,
in time you'll develop a service history and learn what kinds of
hardware items break fairly regularly.
You'll also see how to convince your PC vendor to
supply replacement parts under warranty coverage, as well as how to
estimate the time for getting the replacement part to your company
and installed into the appropriate PC.
A major cost to consider is employee downtime, as well
as time spent by your internal guru chasing down the warranty
replacement part, perhaps during an inopportune time.
Value of System Downtime
For a quick, back-of-the-napkin calculation of what
system downtime might be costing your company, consider:
(A) Projected annual revenue ___________________
(B) Business days per year _______________________
(C) Hours in a business day _____________________
Your hourly cost of system downtime = A / [B x C]
For example, if your company plans to do $4,000,000 in
annual sales (A) over 250 business days (B), with 8-hour days (C),
your hourly cost of system downtime is $2,000 ($4,000,000 divided by
250 days times 8 hours a day).
Great Spares
Relative Cost Indicator: $-$$
Consider a basic mouse, for example. Most PC vendors
would be happy to cover such an inexpensive item under the standard
warranty. However, given that you could purchase a spare replacement
mouse for about $10 to $30, is it really worth one of your employees
being without a mouse, or worse yet without a PC, for a day or two
while you await the cross-shipped replacement part under your warranty
coverage?
Now your internal guru still may want to pursue
getting the broken mouse replaced under warranty coverage. But if you
have a spare mouse on hand, at least the warranty claim can be
deferred a few days, or a few weeks, until time permits. In the
interim, you've mitigated the downtime for a very nominal
advanced planning expense.
Similarly, keeping a spare keyboard and monitor at
your office makes sense. Again, the cost of these items is very
inexpensive relative to the potential productivity loss while you're
waiting for replacement parts to arrive. These three external items
also have a unique appeal: They can all be installed rapidly by a PC
beginner, without going near the innards of the PC.
Spare Desktop PCs
Relative Cost Indicator: $$-$$$
As the price of entry-level desktop PCs has plummeted
and expectations for zero downtime have risen, we've also seen small
businesses purchasing an extra PC, to keep fully configured and ready
to plug in on a moment's notice.
In the old days of expensive PC hardware, small
businesses used to routinely spend $100 to upgrade their warranty from
one year to three years on-site coverage.
But today, if your standard, fully-configured
entry-level desktop PC only costs around $600, an office with as few
as six PCs can fully fund the purchase of a spare desktop PC, simply
by self-insuring on the warranty coverage for years two and three.
At the same time, consider how much the $600 desktop PC really is
worth on paper (after depreciation) following years one and two.
Again, I'm not advocating that you haul broken
desktop PC equipment out to the dumpster. However, I do strongly
recommend that you invest some of your technology budget in select
spare parts, and a full desktop PC, so that you can handle warranty
claims at your leisure, not when your company is
swamped and functioning in panic mode. And if you're outsourcing
this sort of work to a local computer consultant, keeping spares on
hand will lessen the need to pay costly emergency rate premiums.
Get
the Sample Action Items for Tip #18
