IT Departments often opt for a free or basic remote support tool instead of an enterprise grade solution, mostly due to budget restrictions. But when you look at growing IoT networks and compliance regulations, the cost you “save” upfront in not purchasing a more sophisticated, robust solution could show up unexpectedly in the form of loss of productivity- or even worse - a breach.
These costs come in all shapes and sizes. Some come in smaller amounts that are difficult to notice, such as loss of time or productivity. These are like your daily latte, which individually may not seem like a big expense, but when you look at it from a monthly view, it’s a bigger chunk of change than you thought. And others are a big, red, alarming price tag such as dealing with the fallout of a security breach. It’s like if your furnace broke — it’s expensive, unexpected, and inconvenient. We’ve identified some potential costs of using free and basic tools, check them out:
Security and Reputational Trust
A data breach means an expensive investigation and a potential loss of customers. According to a 2016 IBM report from the Ponemon Institute, the average consolidated total cost of a data breach hovers around $4 million dollars. In addition, without a thorough log of activity and data handled, it will be difficult to pass a compliance audit which may result in varying fines.
Flexibility and Productivity
Less productivity means wasted time, and time is money. According to the Metrics That Matter 2016 ITSP Benchmarking Study, 52% of companies report wasting as much as five hours per week on tasks such as entering data into multiple systems, scheduling and dispatching techs, capturing billable hours, and managing disparate operating systems. Even if your company is performing at its peak, losing just one hour in productivity per task each week results in an average of nearly $29,000 in lost revenue. And that’s for each employee.
Staff Retention
According to a 2013 MetricNet report, the average voluntary and involuntary turnover of a helpdesk is 38.3% and the average cost of replacing an agent is roughly $10,000 in North America. Of course, many additional factors contribute to staff turnover such as work environment, career opportunity, and pay, but as the numbers add up it is important to look at all avenues to retain staff.
Support Resources
Similar to flexibility and productivity, every minute of unnecessary time trying to troubleshoot a problem adds up. The average American spends around 13 hours a year on hold with customer service, according to a Time Magazine article. Minimize those hours spent on troubleshooting and getting help with the remote support solution you use.
Want to avoid all of these costs? Take a look at more sophisticated options that can not only improve productivity, but have security features that can help you protect critical customer and company information. Bomgar Remote Support enables you to quickly access and fix nearly any remote device, running any platform, located anywhere in the world. Bomgar offers the security, integration, and management capabilities your IT and customer support organizations need to increase productivity, improve performance, and deliver a superior customer experience. Read the full report and get a better idea of what free tools may be costing your business, or check out our on-demand webinar that shares more details.
Jonas Outlaw, Senior Product Manager
As Senior Product Manager, Jonas works with a variety of stakeholders in the product development lifecycle to help drive product direction and enhancements. Jonas brings more than a decade of experience to BeyondTrust in various aspects of applications development, systems engineering and product management. Prior to joining BeyondTrust, Jonas was a systems engineer at a large life insurance company. He received his MBA with a concentration in Management Information Systems from Mississippi College.
