The impact of critical IT incidents on Singapore organizations

WHILE IT incidents in all organizations around the world are common, the implications are huge. Not only do they cause a significant amount of down time, they also impact business productivity and harm customer experience.

A new research report by Quocirca provided insight into the impact of IT incidents on organizations around the world. All respondents to the survey were senior IT managers. The survey focuses on critical incidents that can halt business processes and impact users and customers.

IT Incidents

In this digital age, organizations are becoming more reliant on IT, and with this comes an IT infrastructure that is becoming increasingly complex.

The Quocirca report revealed that on average Singaporean companies face around 929 IT incidents per month. This result comes in as the third lowest across the countries surveyed, with UK having the highest number at 2,544 per month.

However, when it comes to critical IT events, Singapore ranked as the fourth highest among all countries surveyed, with an average of 4.5 per month. The global mean number logged per month is 5.1.

The average cost of having to deal with a critical IT incident in a Singaporean firm is US$60,466 – the highest out of the countries surveyed. Furthermore, when it comes to the overall business cost of a critical IT incident to the organization, this amount rises to US$142,198. These extremely high amounts highlight the importance of incident management within IT and the profound impacts they can have on a business.

One factor of successful incident management is the efficient analysis of the root cause of a critical incident.  The quicker an organization recognizes and fixes an incident, the sooner the root cause analysis (RCA) can be started, and the faster costs can be reduced.

The RCA is crucial in order to improve the on-going management of IT infrastructure and to avoid repeat incidents. The Quocirca report revealed that the mean time companies spend on RCA is 7.23 hours, with a result determined 65 percent of the time.

When it comes to duplicate and repeat incidents, Singapore were among the lowest levels, indicating a successful and efficient RCA procedure. The average percentage of duplicate IT incidents was 14.1 percent – beaten only by the UK. Singapore stands at 12.6 percent in regard to repeat accident rates, compared to a global average of 13.3 percent.

When exploring the general concerns surrounding IT management, the report revealed that Singaporean companies regarded security threats as the highest concern. This was followed by down time of IT systems and pressure to drive down IT costs.

Business-related concerns

When focusing on the potential consequences of IT incidents, for organizations in Singapore, concerns relating to the business were prominent:

• Impact on business revenues as a result of IT incidents had a mean score of 2.41 out of 5
• Overall costs of IT management had a mean score of 2.8 out of 5
• The impact of IT incidents on customer/user experience had a mean score of 2.16 out of 5

With increasing pressure to stay relevant and remain competitive, IT departments are striving to increase the development of high-quality digital services. However, this can lead to increased IT complexity, often leaving staff to struggle with the management of incidents whilst also inflicting detrimental costs to IT departments and overall business costs.

Dealing with critical IT incidents efficiently must be a top priority in order to avoid risks such as reputational damage. To do this, IT teams should be equipped with the right tools to ensure end-to-end visibility of processes and the IT infrastructure. Leveraging these tools will enable quick detection, RCA, and a reduction in the number of people involved in fixing the problem.

If an organization achieves all of this, then the cost and impact of IT incidents on their business should significantly reduce.

To calculate the cost of critical IT incidents to your organization, click HERE.

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