An Introduction to: Budgeting
At Mindcore, we pride ourselves in providing our clients with the expert guidance they need to make the best decision. At the end of the day though, they’re the ones who make the final decision and our role is to support that decision. You may have similar relationships, so you understand that those decisions aren’t always so easy–especially when it impacts the bottom line.
This bi-coastal firm had 100 employees who helped them execute marketing and publicity strategies for high-profile clients across the country. These clients trusted them with their professional careers, which is why they were highly regarded throughout their industry.
However, like many mid-size businesses, they took occasional risks in order to cut costs and boost their bottom line. That came to an end recently, when after nearly ten months of warnings and urgent recommendations from our team, their email server crashed and corrupted their database, deleting all of their company’s emails.
The Challenge
Here’s What We Were Up Against.
The client made the decision to postpone implementing a critical system for budgetary reasons. They labeled the upgrade as an “insurance policy” and since a crash would have been “unlikely”, they decided they could afford the risk. That gamble failed.
That afternoon, we started to see alerts come through to our 24/7 support desk. The “unlikely” crash had put a complete stop to their business. Their collaborations ceased. Their clients were in the dark. The project all came to a halt.
The Solution
Here’s How We Helped Them Overcome.
Our emergency response team worked for 72 hours straight to implement a range of creative solutions to help them stabilize their system. Since their team was scattered across the county, we worked with them remotely so that we could rebuilt their entire system from scratch. By the next Monday, their business was fully operational but the bulk of their email was still gone.
The following week, we moved our focus to recovering their lost emails. We succeeded in restoring most of their emails but there was still a small percentage of emails that were lost.
The pain of this experience was real to their entire team but what normally would have put a company completely out of business only took them offline for a few days. This was because they had Mindcore on call.
The Outcome
This Is How It Impacted Them.
The crash and all the work it took to rebuild their system and recover their emails cost them tens of thousands of dollars in lost revenue and productivity. It also had an immeasurable impact on their brand and trustworthiness in the industry.
This could have been a total loss for them, but the skills and sophistication of our IT specialists allowed them to isolate the damage and keep it minimal.
That said, this disaster was entirely avoidable and the price of implementing the original upgrade was far cheaper than what they had to spend to recover.
As business leaders ourselves, we understand budgets and the inclination to take risks. At the end of the day, as leaders, we need to be asking ourselves the tough questions. Are we listening to our advisors? What are the real implications of a system failure or cyber attack?
