Why Ignoring These Opportunity Costs Will Destroy Your Balance Sheet

CEOs make tough financial choices every day.   Every capital expense requires a combination of fact finding and polishing the crystal ball.  On the one hand, CEOs need to know the acquisition cost, the operating cost, depreciation cost, useful life and so on for every asset purchased.  On the other hand they need to look into their crystal ball and make some educated guesses and intuitive leaps as to what the future may hold.

Award winning entrepreneur, Bill Douglas helps his customers uncover high opportunity cost that typically get missed. He put it this way. “I see it every day.  C-Level managers get so focused on external drivers and cost cutting; they often overlook the high opportunity cost of a seemingly simple cost reduction.”

Mr. Douglas identified these very expensive cost cutting mistakes:

• Assigning routine computer/network maintenance tasks to professionals that should be working on billable projects.
• Overstaffing of highly paid IT employees for general maintenance and security tasks that their competitors have learned to outsource at reduced cost.
• Tying up working capital in computer hardware and software purchases when they could leverage the assets of a managed services provider and have scalable hardware and software to meet current demand.
• Directing highly paid purchasing staff to waste time trying to save a few bucks on non-strategic consumable items when they should be putting all their energy into reducing the cost of production supplies.

Bill Douglas is the founder and CEO of EssentiaLink and specializes in delivering managed IT and procurement BPO services to Small and Medium Businesses.  EssentiaLink has earned 13 growth awards for providing exceptional services and support.

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EssentiaLink Warns of Conflicker Worm Scheduled to Cause Havoc April 1st

USA Today reports “there has never been anything quite like the Conficker worm.” This worm is no small threat. Conflicker aka Downup, Downadup and Kido, first surfaced in October 2008 and according to PC World had infected over 8.9 million computers by mid January.

On October 23, 2008, Microsoft released a critical security patch to address a security flaw in MS operating system that allows this worm to take over remote control of Windows based computers. “It’s unfortunate,” comments Bill Douglas, CEO of EssentiaLink, “All too often these critical patches get ignored. Small and Medium sized business often do not have the internal resources to keep up with critical patch management on all of their servers and workstations.”

“I am not sure people realize just how aggressive hackers and cyber-criminals are,” remarks Douglas. “Back in September, Chinese hackers started selling a program for $38 that was designed specifically to exploit vulnerabilities in MS operating systems. By October, Conflicker was in the wild. Not keeping operating systems updated is like swimming in shark infested waters with a porterhouse steak strapped to your chest.”

Opinions amongst experts vary as to the damage they feel will be caused but Conflicker. But, regardless of the damage caused by this worm, 2 underlying problems remain unchanged.

First, there is a very active community of hackers working diligently to find ways to take over computers.

Second, there are millions of careless computer users that do not take the necessary steps to secure their computer networks.

Mr. Douglas recommends that people immediately check the Internet for Conflicker detection and removal tools. Then when the worm has been removed, update the operating system to secure against future attacks.

For businesses that don’t have the internal staff required to keep up with all the patches and security tasks, he suggests they outsource the security tasks to reliable managed services providers that specialize in computer network security.

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