Most small businesses only look at IT when something stops working. On the day things break, the real pain isn’t the engineer’s bill. It’s the people you’re paying who can’t work, the sales that don’t happen, and the clients who quietly lose confidence. Break/fix feels cheap right up until it isn’t. Then it’s chaos, late nights, and a week of catching up. There’s a calmer, cheaper way to run the shop, and it isn’t complicated!
Let’s do some maths!
When systems go down, money leaks in three places: staff time, profit at risk, and the clean‑up. A simple way to price an outage is:
Downtime cost = (Hourly staff cost × people affected × hours lost) + (Profit at risk per hour × hours) + Fix bill
Imagine twenty people standing still for three hours at a fully‑loaded staff cost of £30 per hour. That’s £1,800 before you’ve even looked at lost sales. If your profit at risk is £300 an hour, add another £900. Now throw in an £800 out‑of‑hours recovery. You’re at £3,500 for what most would call a “small wobble”. If a key client notices, the reputational hit can dwarf all of that. The point isn’t to scare you it’s to show how quickly the numbers run away when you rely on luck.
Why things keep breaking
It’s rarely bad luck. It’s usually a few simple things that quietly drift. Updates don’t get applied and PCs start behaving like old cars. Fine until the cold morning when they won’t start. Backups exist but no one proves they can actually restore, so the first restore attempt happens during an emergency and no idea if its going to work! Passwords get shared, there’s no quick second check (MFA/2FA) at sign‑in, and one compromised login opens the door. Domains, certificates and email settings renew on different cards and calendars; one expiry and messages begin bouncing. Someone makes a “quick fix” at 11 a.m. to help a colleague and a new problem appears at 11:05.
The solution? Be prepared, not reactive
Prepared businesses don’t do anything fancy. They make updates automatic and employ people or companies like Jeccl to help. They use a MFA/2FA login as well as a password. So one stolen password isn’t the end of the world. They don’t just back up; they pick one file a month and put it back, take a screenshot, and keep it. Someone watches the basics 24/7 so you find out about issues before your team does. There’s a single place, an asset register, listing laptops, licences and renewals so nothing quietly expires. And there’s a one‑page incident plan that says who to call, what to tell staff and customers, and when the next update is due. Simple habits, repeated, beat firefighting every time.
Your 3‑step plan (30/60/90 days)
First month Get monitoring on every device so you can actually see what’s happening. Turn on two‑step login and push out modern antivirus to everything. Do one test restore from backup, not a pretend one, an actual file and save the proof. Agree a change window wiht your team or IT support company so risky work doesn’t happen during busy hours. Share the one‑page incident plan with your team so everyone knows who’s steering the ship.
Second Month Decide what a “standard PC” looks like in your business and make it quick to deploy. Tidy email security so imposters find it harder to trick staff and your own messages are trusted. Put every renewal, domains, certificates, licences, in one calendar and give it an owner (your IT guys are happy to take ownership). Separate admin access from day‑to‑day logins, this is a part of Cyber Essentials!
Last month! Look at the tickets and fix the repeat offenders at the root so they stop coming back. Plan the upgrades that actually move the needle, the dodgy Wi‑Fi, the five‑year‑old laptops, the storage that’s always full. Book a short quarterly review so the basics keep ticking and you don’t slide back into firefighting.
Break/Fix vs Managed — the simple view
Break/fix pays the provider when you’re down; managed support pays them to keep you up. In a break/fix world you find out about problems when staff start shouting; in a managed world you get proactive support and issues are handled quietly. Managed support makes IT support a dodle! Backups in break/fix are a hope; in managed they’re a promise because the restore is regularly tested and proven. Costs under break/fix are spiky and stressful; under managed they’re flat and forecastable. Most importantly, the stress drops. That’s the bit your team will notice.
How can we help?
Jeccl provides calm, plain‑English IT support. We put the basics in place, automatic updates, Antivirus and PC monitoring and work to keep you on track and your IT running as well as can be. We make the tech work for you! When projects are needed, we explain the trade‑offs and price them upfront. We’re here to help you and your business by removing all the Stress with your IT systems. One PC at a time we’ll get your business running as efficiently as possible.