Friday, November 24, 2006

A Ounce of Prevention ... or a Pound of Financial Loss?

Say it isn't so.

The retail giant Walmart didn't know that lots of people were going to be visiting their website today?!?! In this AP article, Walmart's website crashed due to too many visitors.

Memo to Walmart Execs:

People tend to shop on the day after Thanksgiving (aka "Black Friday").
A lot of people.
Might want to build up that IT department a bit.

My guess is that Walmart won't be releasing figures on the financial damage (hint: average the total web sales for hours), but the figures could easily run into the millions. Imaging losing millions of dollars in sales because your website is down. Now imagine you have an IT department the size of Walmarts.

An ounce of IT prevention could have prevents a pound of financial loss.

BOTTOM LINE: Great leaders pay attention to the ounce-of-prevention rule.

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