The COO’s Guide to Mitigating the Cost of Operational Downtime

Every COO understands what it means for operations to stop. The cost is immediate, visible, and cumulative. The longer the disruption runs, the more expensive each additional hour becomes, both in direct losses and in the downstream consequences that take weeks or months to fully resolve. 

That information is not particularly new. What's changed in recent years is how severe these disruptions tend to be. According to a 2022 report from Statista, once an attack hits the average recovery time is 24 days of disrupted operations, which is up from 15 days in 2020. SMBs should be particularly wary, as Verizon's 2025 Data Breach Investigations Report recorded that ransomware features in 88% of all SMB-related data breaches. 

For operational leaders who haven't built continuity planning into their operational framework, the question isn't whether a significant disruption will occur; it's whether the organization will be ready to respond when it does. 

The encouraging reality is that downtime, while rarely preventable in absolute terms, is very much mitigable. The difference between an organization that recovers in hours and one that recovers in weeks usually comes down to the decisions made long before the incident. 

What Ransomware and IT Outages Actually Do to Operations

It helps to be specific about what operational disruption looks like in practice, because the gap between how IT teams describe a ransomware attack and how operations teams experience one is significant.

From an IT perspective, ransomware is a security incident where systems are encrypted, access is lost, and recovery procedures are initiated.

For COOs across various sectors, the impact of a system outage is immediate and far-reaching, though it manifests in distinct ways:

• In manufacturing and distribution, the disruption is visible on the floor as dark warehouses and inaccessible ERP systems halt production and trigger a supply chain ripple effect that takes weeks to resolve.
• For professional services, the crisis is characterized by missed deadlines and frozen revenue as client-facing platforms and project management tools go offline, leaving teams unable to deliver work despite mounting operational costs.
• Most critically, in healthcare, the stakes escalate to a clinical level; the loss of electronic health records and pharmacy systems forces staff into manual workflows, slowing patient care and introducing risks that transcend mere operational efficiency.

Beyond the direct disruptions, the financial consequences compound in ways that don't show up immediately on a balance sheet. Customer relationships erode when commitments go unmet, supply chain partners begin to build redundancy away from an organization they perceive as unreliable, and employees lose confidence in systems they depend on daily. In regulated industries, an outage that affects data availability or integrity can trigger reporting obligations and regulatory scrutiny on top of everything else.

IT outages that aren't ransomware-related produce operationally identical consequences, despite the cause being different.

For operations teams across industries, the practical question is always the same: how long can the business operate without its core systems, and what does it cost for every hour it has to?

What COOs Should Have in Place Before an Incident Hits

Business continuity planning is often treated as a solely IT responsibility, but operations leaders play a distinct and essential role in continuity planning that goes beyond what IT and security teams can provide on their own.

The reason is straightforward: IT can restore systems. Only the COO can define what the business needs those systems to do, in what order, and within what timeframe, for operations to function. That operational context is the foundation of an effective continuity plan, and without it, recovery efforts tend to prioritize technical completeness over business impact.

The elements operations teams should have in place before an incident include:

• A documented business impact analysis. This is the operational heart of any continuity plan. It maps which systems, processes, and data are critical to operations, what happens to the business if each one goes down, and how long the organization can sustain operations without them. This means going function by function and defining the real tolerance for disruption in each area.

• Defined recovery time and recovery point objectives. Recovery Time Objectives (RTOs) define how quickly critical systems need to be restored after an outage. Recovery Point Objectives (RPOs) define how much data loss the business can tolerate — in other words, how far back a system can be rolled back before it creates unacceptable operational gaps.
• Tested backup and failover systems. Backups that have never been tested are assumptions, not protections. Operational leaders should know whether backups exist for every critical system, how frequently they run, where they're stored, and how long it actually takes to restore from them in a real incident.
• Manual operational procedures. For the systems and processes most critical to keeping the business running, ensure that manual workarounds exist and are documented.
• A communication plan that covers internal and external stakeholders. During an outage, the operational damage compounds when communication breaks down alongside systems. Operations teams should have a defined protocol for notifying customers, supply chain partners, and employees that doesn't depend on the systems that may be unavailable.
• Clearly defined roles during an incident. Continuity plans that don't specify who does what under pressure tend not to be followed under pressure. COOs should work with IT and security leadership to define the decision-making structure during an incident: who declares that a continuity plan has been activated, who owns operational response versus technical response, and who has the authority to make real-time calls on prioritization when everything can't be restored at once.

The COO's Role in Continuity Planning Alongside IT and Security

Business continuity is most effective when it's built at the intersection of operational knowledge and technical capability — which means the COO and IT and security leadership need to build it together.

In practice, the division of responsibility looks like this: IT and security teams own the technical architecture of recovery, and the COO owns the operational requirements that recovery needs to meet.

Neither can do the other's job effectively. A recovery plan built entirely by IT optimizes for technical completeness and may restore systems in an order that makes sense architecturally but creates unnecessary operational disruption. A continuity plan built entirely by operations may define requirements that aren't technically achievable within the constraints of the existing infrastructure. The plans that work are built together, tested together, and revisited together on a regular cycle.

For operational leaders, the practical starting point is a structured conversation with IT and security leadership that answers a few foundational questions: What can we actually recover, and how fast? What are we not currently protecting that we should be? If an incident happened tomorrow, what would the first two hours look like — and are we confident in that answer?

Final Thoughts

Organizations that invest in continuity planning before an incident consistently recover faster, lose less, and sustain fewer long-term operational consequences than those that don't.

For COOs, business continuity is an operational imperative to be led in partnership with IT and security, grounded in a clear understanding of what the business needs to keep running, and tested regularly enough that the plan works when it actually needs to.

The gap between having a continuity plan and having one that works under real conditions is significant. Closing that gap is among the highest-value investments an operations leader can make.

Next Steps

PulseOne helps operational leaders build business continuity programs that are grounded in operational reality, not just technical best practice. We work alongside your IT and security teams to ensure that when a disruption hits, your organization is ready to respond and recover on your terms.

If you're ready to close the gap between where your continuity planning is today and where it needs to be, contact PulseOne to get started.

_______

PulseOne is a business services company delivering information technology IT management solutions to small and mid-sized businesses for over 20 years. In short, we’re your “get IT done” people.

We are passionate about the power of PEOPLE and TECHNOLOGY to transform a company. We are confident we can significantly accelerate your PROGRESS towards your business technology objectives.

For more information visit:

PulseOne – IT Management and IT Support Solutions for SMB