Fantasy Football in the office? What does it cost my business?

Fantasy Football is being played everywhere these days. With new sites like Fan Duel making it increasingly easy to play and BYOD strategies in place by more companies, employees have Fantasy Football at their fingertips.

But whats the big deal it's just football...right?!

Football is amazing, one could argue America's favorite sport. The Super Bowl is getting closer and closer and who doesn't want to watch the big game, see all the ads and talk about it for the next week at the water cooler, or Keurig depending on your office.

But how does Fantasy Football affect business? The more employees are spending their time managing their teams, making trades, arguing about league rules, something has to suffer. That suffering is the business network and productivity. 

Many SMB owners think IT downtime only costs them a few productive hours, but there’s a lot more at stake when your systems go down or are misused. Customer satisfaction and loss of brand integrity are just two of the key losses apart from the more evident costs such as lost productivity and a temporary dip in sales.

1. Customer Loss - Today’s buyer lacks patience; They are used to getting everything at the click of a mouse, at the tap of a finger. Suppose they are looking for the kind of products/services that you offer and your employees reaction time is less than adequate and your internal network is sluggish. Even if temporarily-- you are likely to lose them to a competitor—permanently.

2. Damage to Brand Reputation - Customers are now using Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter and blogs to vent their bad brand experiences. Imagine an irate customer who doesn’t know if their card was charged on your site, or not, due to a server error. If it’s your bad day, they could probably be using Facebook or Twitter to share their bad experience, and it could be viewed by hundreds of people, causing irreparable harm to your brand image.

3. Loss of Productivity - When your systems don’t work, this can have a direct impact on your employees’ productivity. Bandwidth is an increasingly important commodity. Whether we are talking about internet and networking speeds or appropriate use of time which is a most important commodity.

Not all people play Fantasy Football or play at work, but it is important to know what's going on in your business and to protect your investment and to help it grow. Watchguard firewall equipment protects your network from intrusions and from productivity loss. Contact an MSP today to configure your network. Get a free network evaluation, learn what's on your network, how it functions, how it can be improved and how to protect it. 

The bottom line—one natural disaster, one technical snag or just one power outage has the power to put you out of business - both virtually and in reality. It’s probably time to think about how you can mitigate the threat of a possible downtime and whether your MSP can act as an effective and efficient ally in this battle for you. And lastly....GO FINS!