How to Calculate the Cost of AV Downtime

Put a Dollar Figure on Every Hour a Meeting Room Stays Dark 

The quarterly review starts at nine. By 9:12, the display still reads “No Signal,” six people are huddled around a laptop, and the regional VP who dialed in from another office has been on mute for ten minutes, unsure anyone can hear her. Everyone in the room knows something went wrong, but almost nobody can say what it cost.

Most organizations can quote what a conferencing room costs to build, yet few can quote what an hour of it sitting dark costs the business. 

Below is a simple way to put a number on that, using figures from your own conferencing spaces. 

SEE ALSO: System Maintenance Can’t Wait

Price the Hours Your People Lose 

Start with the easiest part of the math. Multiply the number of people affected by the minutes lost, divide by 60, then multiply by the average hourly cost per employee, benefits included. 

Suppose ten people lose 20 minutes at a loaded rate of $75 an hour. That comes to roughly $250. Add the half hour an IT technician spends tracing a failed connection, and the total climbs a little higher.

Those numbers look small, which is why a failed meeting usually gets shrugged off as an annoyance. This first figure is typically the smallest you will calculate. The higher costs come from what the outage prevents.

Add In the Meeting That Never Happens 

A dead display rarely stops at a delay. A client presentation gets rescheduled, and the deal it supported slips by a week. A hybrid town hall loses half its audience when the stream drops, and the message leadership planned to deliver goes unheard.

Live events raise the stakes further. Production crews and venue staff are usually booked by the hour, so a late start to a keynote keeps the clock running while the problem gets solved. A sales kickoff that begins 30 minutes behind schedule can still bill for every minute of that wait.

Put an estimate on each outcome that applies to your organization and add it to the running total. A rough figure is better than a blank, since you can refine it as the data improves.

Multiply by How Often It Happens 

One failure is an anecdote, but a year of past failures becomes a budget line item. Ask your help desk how many AV-related tickets came in over the past twelve months, and ask facilities how often a room was pulled out of use. Multiply the cost of a typical incident by that count.

Each space can have different outage costs. A boardroom that hosts client calls every day carries far more exposure than a huddle space booked twice a month, and a university lecture hall loses an entire class’s attention during a period when its microphone fails. Run the math room by room, and the biggest risks tend to rank themselves.

Weigh the Total Against the Cost of Prevention 

With an annual figure in hand, a managed services plan reads like insurance against a number you can now see. M3 Technology Group’s technicians learn all about your building and your team’s needs during onboarding, so a service call starts with your history and past service tickets already on file.

M3 VISION, our AV management portal, adds real-time alerts across your systems, whatever the manufacturer. A failing device can surface on the dashboard before anyone walks into the nine o’clock meeting, giving your team time to fix it quickly without causing a fuss. If the plan costs less than the downtime you calculated, the decision gets much easier.

Overcome AV Downtime with M3 Technology Group

The calculations may take you the afternoon, but the answer can reshape how you plan your next AV budget. If you would like help putting numbers together, request a consultation here. Our team can walk through where downtime costs your organization the most and what it would take to shrink that figure.