Downtime is the one thing that almost every business fears. After all, downtime isn’t just going to affect your business. If you’re a supplier, you know that you might have a knock-on effect on everyone who relies on you, which could shred your reputation. Even little plans, like payroll or monthly financial management, is harder if your IT is down.
There are many skills to have as a consultant, and many optimization pathways a consultant can offer a business. One of the more underrated elements is that of helping companies protect against, or have resilience in spite of, the chance of downtime. It’s not easy to brand yourself as this, and so it’s likely to be one of your many talents and value propositions. Yet if you do intend to offer this, it’s good to know what you’re talking about. In this post, we’ll discuss how to become the go-to downtime consultant in your field:
1: Understand The Power Supply
Checking the physical equipment is a solid first step, as if the power cuts out, the business stops dead. Keeping the lights on is a priority. You’ll want to suggest they look at their backup power carefully, with generator servicing, a detail that’s usually missed. Ensuring the machine starts up when the grid fails is vital.
Suggesting a schedule for maintenance and then implementing structures to account for that and sign off on the process continually can help. After all, the machines left idle get rusty or have dead batteries, and so catching issues on a sunny Tuesday is preferred to finding them during a storm or when you’re offsite but certain operations need to keep running, such as with server farms.
2: Suggest Better Digital Backups
Losing data is a quick way for any business to ruin a reputation, and it has happened more than you’d first assume. Reviewing the current method for saving work is a necessary task, as it relies on a single server or an old hard drive in a closet. As such, proposing a cloud solution or off-site storage is a safer bet.
Clients like knowing files are safe if the office has a disaster, which means redundancy is the name of the game here. Consultants can provide huge peace of mind if they integrate a method for digital backups that work and can be trusted as time goes on.
3: Draft A Crisis Protocol
Most businesses initially panic when an issue like this takes place, and it’s fairly understandable. That said, having a plan written down for the moment systems go offline is essential. You’ll want to help them decide who calls the IT team and who talks to the angry customers, and also what the grading and communications process looks like.
For instance, having templates ready for social media updates could help, as writing a polite message is hard when everyone’s running around shouting or you have to wait for technicians to get in while being on call. Just putting these processes in practice could be a helpful contribution.
4: Build a Culture of Prevention, Not Reaction
The best downtime consultants don’t just fix problems, they prevent them. Once you’ve audited hardware, backups and protocols, your next step is shifting your mindset from “we’ll deal with it when it happens” to “we’ll stop it before it happens.”
5: Strengthen Your Own Reputation
To become the go-to downtime specialist, you also need visibility. Publish case studies (even small ones), share quick insights on LinkedIn, talk about common downtime mistakes, and highlight wins like “recovered X hours of operation” or “prevented a full system outage.”
With this advice, you’ll be sure to manage any downtime with care.
Featured image: Karola G
;)