The Real Cost of IT Downtime for a 20-Person Business

Ask most business owners what an IT outage costs and they'll shrug. The number matters, because it's the only honest way to decide what prevention is worth. Here's the arithmetic for a typical 20-person Adelaide business.

The direct maths

Twenty staff, average fully-loaded cost around $50 an hour each. If systems are down and nobody can work properly, that's roughly $1,000 per hour in wages for people who can't do their jobs. A full day offline? Around $8,000 — before you count anything else.

The costs that don't show on a spreadsheet

Missed revenue: orders not taken, quotes not sent, jobs not booked. For many businesses this dwarfs the wage cost.

The recovery tax: work doesn't vanish during an outage — it queues. Staff burn the following days catching up, often at overtime rates, while new work keeps arriving.

Reputation: clients who can't reach you, or whose deadlines you miss, remember. In Adelaide's tight-knit business community, word travels.

Emergency rates: reactive IT support during a crisis costs more than planned maintenance ever does — if someone can even come today.

The uncomfortable comparison

A single bad day of downtime for a 20-person business can cost more than several months of proactive managed support — the kind that monitors systems overnight and fixes the failing hard drive before it fails. Prevention isn't a luxury line item; it's the cheaper option by a wide margin.

Where to start

You don't need an enterprise budget. Tested backups, proactive monitoring, patched systems and a local helpdesk cover the causes of most outages. If you haven't had an outage yet, that's the best time to prepare — not after.

Curious what your number is? UMI's free consultation includes a downtime risk review for your specific setup. Book a time — it's the cheapest insurance conversation you'll have this year.