Information for Start-Ups and Large DR Companies
Are you interested in growing an existing data recovery business?
For data recovery companies that want to take their business to new levels, or become professional data recovery companies, making a successful transition to the next level of growth requires three fundamental changes:
- A change in their business model – the types of customers they serve.
- A change in their technical model – the complexity of cases they solve.
- A change in their service model.
The first change: a change in business model
PC & IT shops do occasional data recovery work for home users. The data these customers need retrieved has low value and the customer is only willing to pay a low price – typically $99 – for simple data retrieval services.
Smaller DR shops serve small and home businesses. These customers value their data and they are willing to pay more – typically up to $800 – for more complex data recovery services.
Larger DR shops serve larger organizations whose businesses’ would potentially fail without their data and they are willing to pay significant amounts of money – typically up to $2000 – for precise data recovery services.
So, any company that is serious about taking their data recovery business to the next level (a) needs to attract a different type of customer, (b) will get fewer easy jobs, which will have to be addressed downstream by smaller DR and PC & IT shops, and (c) should build its technical capabilities or partner with other DR companies to service cases that cannot be resolved in house.
The second change: a change in technical model
To make a successful change in its technical model, the data recovery shop needs to upgrade its technical ability to handle more complex cases – whether those cases come from customers or from partners.
Here are 3 ways that a data recovery company can change its technical and pricing models. In the data recovery industry, “data = money” and “more data = more money.”
| 1. |
2. |
3. |
| More data from each case (#) |
More successful cases (%) |
More revenue per case ($) |
1. To get more data from each case DR companies typically need to be able to deal with disk-level issues.
2. To have more successful cases DR companies typically need to be able to deal with failed hard drives.
3. To charge more revenue per case DR companies have to deal with more complex cases.
What does this mean for you?
If you are starting a data recovery business, your business strategy should be to acquire professional data recovery tools that will enable you to retrieve more data from common cases, such as partially failed drives and drives with bad sectors.
In our experience, this strategy will increase your average revenue per case from $99 to up to $800.
If you are a large data recovery company interested in growing your business, your business strategy should be to acquire leading-edge data recovery tools and advanced DR knowledge to retrieve more data from the most complex cases.
In our experience, this strategy will increase your average revenue per case from $800 to up to $2000 per case and custom pricing for highly valuable and highly complex cases.
Read more about our Solution for Larger Data Recovery Companies.
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The third change: a change in service model
The lack of business processes and poor client management are the most serious risk areas for professional DR companies. They result in mismanaged cases, customer dissatisfaction, lost revenue, claims, possible liabilities, and too much time wasted on tasks that don’t generate money.
What does this mean for you and what can you do?
You should take time to set up professional business operations with formal business processes, templates, documents, and e-mail messages for managing interactions with your clients and automating routine tasks in your business.
Here are the top 3 business processes a data recovery company should implement to improve its service model.
- Improve your client experience:
Disappointed customers are a fact in this industry. It takes longer to recover the data, the files they really wanted weren’t recoverable, there is a perceived gap between the cost of the DR service and the data that was recovered and received by the client, etc.
Your service strategy should put your client management processes online to remove all of the surprises in the DR company – client communication process. A professional client management process would, for example, allow clients to see a list of their files with their probability of integrity, select the files they want, and sign off before data recovery ever begins. It would also give them online access to the status of their job at all times so that there are no surprises in your process, the results meet their expectations, and they are satisfied.
- Practice professional and profitable quoting processes:
When you can’t see the files and types of files, don’t know which files are most important to the customer, or the probability that you can recover them, quoting is a bit like gambling. You quote too low and lose revenue. You quote too high and lose business.
Your service strategy should use a process and tools that give visibility of files to both you and your client with an HTTP export. Then you can accurately quote based on the probability of integrity and the perceived value of the types of files being requested by your client.
- Automate all of the tasks that can be automated:
To get the information they need to recover the right data, your team members spend a lot of time on the phone or e-mail communicating with the client – confirming files, addresses, manually copying data, etc.
Your service strategy should be to automate the tasks that can be automated using business management tools and client management tools, giving your team more time to focus on critical data recovery tasks. Tasks that can be automated are the collection of information from the client, client communication, initiation of data recovery, copying data, and more.
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