Have you ever had to face a fine for late delivery of products or services to major retailers? Recently we had the opportunity to work with a new client that had this unique issue. Due to network downtime, the company wasn’t able to make shipments on time. As a supplier of textile products to a major retailer, this caused a chain of “arrive by date” fines adding up to $10,000 within the course of two days.
When you work with any major retailer, such as Target or Walmart, you can expect to see a fine of 3% of the total cost of the delivery if the load is delivered before or after the “arrive by date.” If you fail to deliver 10% of the total loads on time, you are no longer allowed to deliver to that retailer, which could mean losing a major account. This is a logistical problem that most manufacturers face, and you don’t want to miss your shipping dates because your company network is down.
The technology you use is the backbone of your business. In the event of a major outage, all business operations come to a screeching halt. The effects of this can not only result in lost revenue due to employee downtime but also far more expensive side effects such as these fines. In the worst case, this could result in the loss of customer and a serious impact on your bottom line.
It is worthwhile to assess what it costs when your network goes down. Understanding this will allow you to see how important it is to make appropriate investments into technology and redundancy to ensure that these issues do not impact your business. Lastly, it is important to work with an IT partner that can ensure smooth network operation and can respond immediately when a problem arises.
