Most leaders underestimate downtime. It is not just lost sales. It is idle payroll, missed SLAs, reputational damage, and recovery costs that compound by the minute.
Use this quick formula to estimate hourly loss:
Direct productivity loss = number of affected staff × loaded hourly rate × percent of work blocked
Revenue loss = average hourly revenue × percent of revenue impacted
Recovery overhead = IT hours × hourly cost + emergency vendor fees + penalties
Intangibles (brand, churn) = estimate as 10–30% uplift if customer-facing
Total hourly cost = sum of the above.
Industry snapshots
Professional services (law, accounting, consulting)
Drivers: billable hours, deadlines, document access.
Example: 25 staff, $120 loaded hourly rate, 80% blocked for 2 hours.
Productivity: 25 × 120 × 0.8 × 2 = $4,800
Recovery: 6 IT hours × $100 = $600
Total ≈ $5,400. Missed court or filing deadlines can multiply this via penalties.
Manufacturing & Industrial
Drivers: line stoppage, scrap, logistics delays.
Example: Single line producing $30,000 value/hour. 30-minute stoppage.
Direct loss: $15,000
Restart scrap and QA: $2,000
Supplier/transport penalties: $1,000
Total ≈ $18,000 for 30 minutes. OT and missed ship windows add more.
Retail & eCommerce
Drivers: site uptime, payment gateways, POS.
Example: Site averages $12,000/hour in sales; outage 45 minutes.
Revenue loss: $9,000
Paid traffic waste and cart abandonment: $1,200
Brand/churn uplift 20% ≈ $2,040
Total ≈ $12,240. Peak-season outages can be 5–10x worse.
Financial & Legal Services
Drivers: trading windows, SLAs, regulatory penalties.
Example: Advisory firm with $8,000/hour billables, outage 1 hour.
Productivity: $8,000
SLA penalties: $1,500
Emergency vendor support: $700
Reputational uplift 15% ≈ $1,620
Total ≈ $11,820. Regulator notifications may be required.
Healthcare
Drivers: EHR access, appointment throughput, compliance.
Example: 10 providers, 15 visits/hour combined, $95 net per visit, outage for 1 hour.
Revenue: 15 × 95 = $1,425
Overtime and rescheduling: $400
Compliance risk uplift (HIPAA exposure, manual workflows): ~15% ≈ $275
Total ≈ $2,100 per hour. Extended outages risk patient safety and audits.
Build your calculator inputs
People: headcount affected, loaded rates, percent blocked
Revenue: hourly run rate, seasonal/peak adjustments
Operations: SLA penalties, overtime, scrap/rework, logistics
IT: MTTD, MTTR, internal and vendor rates, after-hours premiums
Risk: compliance exposure, churn probability, PR costs
How to lower the number
Set RPO/RTO by system and test quarterly
Implement layered backups with immutable storage
Use MFA, EDR, and patch SLAs to cut incident frequency
Add monitoring with alerting and on-call runbooks
Run tabletop exercises and keep vendor contacts current
Want a tailored downtime calculator for your industry and systems? Let’s build one from your metrics and share a one-page risk report you can use in budget discussions. Contact us to get the ball rolling.