Four Ways to Make a Backup and Restore Solution Pay for Itself
April 14th, 2010 - Posted by Tim Freestone
The only thing better than getting a great deal is paying nothing at all! Of course, giving solutions away makes it difficult to stay in business, so this is where IT solution providers need to get creative. If you can find a way to deliver a solution at no incremental cost to your client, you’re delivering a profound value, increasing revenue and saving your client money relative to its current budget. With backup and restore solutions, you have a shot at accomplishing this.
The balancing act comes down to cost versus return, as it does with any IT investment. The nature of backup and restore solutions is such that you can find waste easily and deliver a solution that cuts excess spending while providing value.
Here are four ways to make a backup and restore solution pay for itself:
1. Emphasize efficiency
Inefficient systems generate costs every day. They may come in the form of additional maintenance time for your IT department, extra planning or lost revenue and employee productivity time. There is pain point for your clients; all you have to do is identify it. Work with your client to architect a solution that addresses pain points around inefficiency, and you’ve financed at least part of the sale with cost savings.
2. Timing is everything
Many companies struggle with backup windows, and the implications stretch far beyond the IT department. Faster backups can improve overall infrastructure performance and enable cost-savings initiatives throughout the business areas your clients support. Think about it: shaving 60 seconds from every five-minute client interaction in a high-volume call center results in a business unit-wide time savings of 20 percent. That’s capacity your client never knew it had!
3. Prevent equipment purchases
A flexible infrastructure, powered by virtualization technologies, can make existing equipment far more effective. Implement a backup and restore solution that includes virtualization, and you can lower your clients’ equipment costs. In addition to deferring hardware costs now, your client won’t have to spend as much later. This is a two-tier savings.
4. Compliance matters
Except in rare cases, compliance is pure cost. If you can use backup and restore solutions, particularly those that are virtualized, to contribute to a client’s planned IT-related compliance investment, you’ve found another opportunity to address two costs for the price of one … and you can actually attach an ROI case to compliance!
So, will you be able to fully finance a client’s backup and restore investment with cost savings? Well, that ultimately depends on a company’s specific IT situation. Even if you can’t get your client to a 100 percent break-even, you’ll still be able to take much of the sting out of the investment.
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