by Dave Roberson
Picture a normal Tuesday morning. Your team logs in and nothing works. No email. No shared files. Your accounting system won’t open. Sales can’t pull quotes. Dispatch can’t route trucks. Your receptionist can’t print a work order. Now extend that scenario for three full business days. Most owners think of downtime as an “IT problem.” In reality, it’s a business continuity problem, and for small and mid-sized companies in the St. Louis market, it becomes expensive very quickly.
Let’s start with a simple local benchmark. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average hourly wage in the St. Louis, MO-IL metropolitan area is approximately $30.57 per hour (May 2024 data). Three business days equals roughly 24 working hours. That means you’re paying about $733 per employee in wages alone (24 hours × $30.57) while little or no productive work is being completed. For a company with 10 employees, that’s $7,330. With 20 employees, $14,660. With 40 employees, $29,320. And that is payroll only. It does not include benefits, overtime required to catch up, delayed invoicing, missed sales opportunities, contractual penalties, or the long-term cost of frustrated customers.
Even a modest 15-person St. Louis company could easily see $10,000 or more in direct productivity loss over three days, before a single client decides to look elsewhere.
Downtime also creates a multiplier effect that many owners underestimate. In manufacturing, it disrupts production schedules. In professional services, it halts billing and client deliverables. In construction, it delays estimates and change orders. In logistics, it affects routing, documentation, and compliance. What starts as a technical issue quickly becomes an operational bottleneck.
For small businesses in particular, timing matters. If invoicing is delayed by even a week, cash flow tightens. Vendor payments shift. Payroll pressure increases. The impact lingers long after systems are restored.
In many St. Louis small businesses, the greatest risk isn’t a sophisticated cyberattack, it’s aging hardware running critical workflows until something fails. A Microsoft-commissioned study found that PCs older than four years are 2.7 times more likely to require repairs, resulting in an average of 112 hours of lost productivity over their remaining lifespan. Older systems may feel “paid for,” but when they fail unexpectedly, the downtime cost often exceeds the replacement cost.
There is also a current reality to consider. Windows 10 support officially ended on October 14, 2025. Systems that cannot upgrade to supported operating systems introduce increased security exposure and compatibility issues over time. Unsupported systems are not just a technology risk, they are a business risk.
The good news is that reducing downtime risk does not require a massive IT budget. It requires intentional planning. Business owners should ask three straightforward questions: If our computers were down for three days, what would stop first? How quickly could we realistically restore operations? Do we have a documented and tested recovery plan, or are we relying on hope?
The companies that recover fastest are not necessarily the largest. They are the most prepared. They maintain a defined hardware replacement cycle. They leverage cloud-based systems where appropriate. They test backups. They establish clear communication protocols before a crisis happens.
Downtime is no longer a rare, once-a-decade event. Power issues, hardware failure, ransomware, and software corruption are part of today’s operating environment.
The real question for St. Louis business owners is not whether three days of downtime would hurt. It is how much it would cost, and whether that number is acceptable.
Dave Roberson is a Founding Partner at CMIT Solutions St. Louis, a Managed IT Service Provider. For more information,
visit www.cmitstl.com.